


Ninety Feet to Home

by acetheticallyy (judesstfrancis)



Series: batting a thousand - the baseball 'verse [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Baseball, Canon Asexual Character, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Trans Female Character, Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Trans Melanie King, unfortunate acquaintances to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25200448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judesstfrancis/pseuds/acetheticallyy
Summary: Jon isn’t really Martin Blackwood’s biggest fan. And he knows it’s a him problem, because it’s not like Blackwood is a terrible person or like he loses on purposes just to ruin Jon’s life, but he can’t help it. In his defense, if you were on a hot streak and the same person kept coming in and ruining it for you every single time, you'd harbor a bit of resentment towards them, too.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay & Tim Stoker, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Melanie King & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: batting a thousand - the baseball 'verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932187
Comments: 181
Kudos: 270





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> to answer your questions before they start: I have no idea where this story takes place. I did base all the baseball in this on the mlb, but whether it really does take place in america with the mlb or in the uk with a more exciting replacement for the bbf is up to u. maybe this is an au where they're all americans! I truly don't know, I kept it vague on purpose so your guess is as good as mine
> 
> with love to robin as always without whom, like most things in my life, this would not be nearly as good as it is

Jonathan Sims is holding onto a nice five run lead by the time he jogs over to the dugout at the end of the sixth inning. He’s about to tug his pitching jacket over his head when they tell him to rest up. Jon doesn’t disagree, he knows he’s pushing his limit at ninety pitches and he’d felt his shoulder start to stiffen up somewhere around eighty-two. But no starter ever _wants_ to get taken out when they’re this hot, regardless of pitch count or injury risk, and in spite of everything Jon feels like he could have gone at _least_ another thirty pitches before he really started needing to cool down.

He doesn’t argue, though. They’re playing a division team next week and he’s scheduled to play game two of the series and he doesn’t want to risk not being at the top of his game. So where otherwise he would’ve tried to weasel his way into another inning or two, he just nods and lets his jacket fall into his lap and calls for some ice for his shoulder. It shouldn’t be a problem later, he thinks, the ache in his shoulder is the good kind that speaks of a job well done, a hard-earned, soon-to-be win, but he doesn’t like to risk it.

Jon kind of wishes he did like to risk it, though, when he lifts his gaze and realizes who exactly is warming up to take his place for the seventh.

Look. It’s not like Jon _hates_ Blackwood or anything, it’s just, well…six of Jon’s last twelve starts should have been solid wins until Blackwood jogged in and gave it all up. He’s still a teammate, and Jon would never hate a teammate, but it’s hard to keep up that easy camaraderie and enthusiastic encouragement when said teammate seems to struggle more than he succeeds and those struggles _directly_ affect your chances of ever getting recognized as pitcher of the year because you just _cannot_ record anything in the win column.

So, Jon isn’t really Blackwood’s biggest fan. And he knows it’s a him problem, because it’s not like Blackwood is a terrible person or like he loses on purposes just to ruin Jon’s life, but he can’t help it.

Again, he doesn’t hate him. Jon thinks they might actually get along if it weren’t for the fact that Jon has had a chip on his shoulder for absolutely no reason since the day he was born and now he thinks he has something to prove. He just wishes Blackwood wasn’t coming in as his relief _today_ , when Jon’s finally got the chance to redeem himself from last week’s shitshow of a start where he only lasted three innings before disappearing into the clubhouse until the top of the ninth. Wins aren’t everything, he knows, he’s _more_ than proved himself, and it’s not like the team is hurting where the playoffs are concerned when they’re five games ahead at the top of their division. But _god_ , would it have felt nice to pull off a win with only two earned runs after the shit that asshole Bouchard wrote about him in the paper following his last start. Jon’s already picturing what he’ll say this time. No doubt he’ll spin it so the loss is _his_ fault, even though going six innings with only two earned runs was a frankly incredible turnaround from giving up six in three.

But the bottom of the seventh hasn’t even started. Blackwood still has time to surprise him yet.

Blackwood doesn’t surprise him. And Jon usually doesn’t like surprises anyway, but he would have made the exception, for this one.

Because being surprised this time around would mean that it was a quick two innings and they could celebrate and go home early in preparation for the travel day tomorrow. And that would have been welcome. It would have been _more_ than welcome. He would’ve settled for his six-run lead being cut down to four. Cut down to _two_ , even. Jon would have been okay with squeaking by with even just one run over the opposition. As long as they didn’t go into extras and they didn’t have to play the bottom of the ninth and his solid start wasn’t all for nothing.

None of that happens, of course. Jon doesn’t believe in gods or superstition of any kind, but it’s a miracle they started warming up their closer and pulled Blackwood before they could blow the game entirely. Gerry should have been in for the eighth, if you ask Jon’s opinion, even though they’d still had a nice three-run buffer at the time before that was quickly given up with two outs still left in the frame. They’re lucky Gerry is always good for the long term, when they need him, and they’re even luckier it only took two at-bats in the eleventh for them to claw back the win.

It’s not _Jon’s_ win, not anymore, but he doesn’t mind sharing it with Gerry. Gerry always has been his favorite, in the bullpen, and at least they didn’t lose and Jon won’t have to wake up in the morning to see Elias fucking Bouchard front and center in the sports section of the paper telling the whole city how horrible he was at starting even though it _wouldn’t have been his fault_.

When Jon makes his way back to the clubhouse, Blackwood is already at his stall, eyes closed and half undressed, leg bouncing in a nervous rhythm. Jon tries not to sigh too audibly when he notices. His own stall is right next to Blackwood’s and he’s not in the mood to parrot out the bright platitudes and reassurances that he usually saves for post-game interviews. Blackwood doesn’t deserve to be yelled at for having a bad outing, even if it is the seventh bad outing in a row. Jon knows what it’s like to have a shit game, and he’s not about to tear into someone when he knows anything he could say would likely pale in comparison to whatever they’re currently telling themselves. Not even when he really, _really_ wants to.

Despite Jon’s own personal feelings, Blackwood deserves the bright platitudes. He deserves the reassurances, because he’s not going to get any better if he’s down on himself, Jon knows that, and god knows no one tries harder, but Jon just isn’t equipped to do that right now. He knows himself—it won’t come out right. That’s better suited to Tim or Georgie or, hell, even _Melanie_.

Gerry comes up behind him and knocks into his shoulder. “Go easy on him. It’s been a rough couple games for him and you know how much he hates disappointing the starters.”

“I wasn’t going to _yell_ at him, Gerry.”

“I know,” he says, reassuring. “But you get all tight when you’re frustrated, and he’ll take it the wrong way. He doesn’t need that tonight.”

Jon nods. He’d already known that, but hearing it from someone else clears his head a little. He’d done his job and he’d done it _well_. They still won. He may still be of the opinion that Blackwood should’ve been sent down to the minors a long time ago, and he may still be a little bitter about the fact that he didn’t get to record his own win tonight, but neither of those things is the point. Blackwood is still his teammate and the team still revolves around more than just Jon’s own personal stats.

“Right.” He claps a hand over Gerry’s shoulder. “Nice win, Gerry.”

Gerry shrugs. “It’s easy when you give me a start like that to work with.” He shakes his head, anticipating Jon’s interruption before Jon can so much as take a breath to say the words. “Could’ve been a lot worse. If you hadn’t given us that six-run lead it would have been over with. They wouldn’t have even put me in. Take the compliment.”

“I’ll take the compliment when you do,” Jon counters.

Gerry answers with a grin. “See you on the plane tomorrow, Jon.” His exit across the room is punctuated by the removal of his cap, dyed-black locks tumbling out over his shoulders as he shakes them out. Jon spares a thought for the patch of blonde in the back that Gerry had clearly missed. He decides it’s funnier if he lets it go for a couple more days first, just to see if Gerry ever notices.

Blackwood’s eyes spring open as soon as Jon approaches his stall.

“Jon, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s fine,” Jon says, even though he still doesn’t think it is. “It happens to everyone, you know.” He gives a small, self-deprecating laugh. “Happened to me last week.”

“But I should’ve been able to hold onto it, I mean—”

“Sure,” Jon agrees, taking great care to soften his tone so the earlier bitterness doesn’t bleed through. He’s not sure how well it works. “And I should’ve been able to go seven. Didn’t do that, either.”

“ _Jon_ —”

Jon’s running out of reassurances at this point, but he thinks if he listens to Blackwood wallow about trying to apologize for much longer, he actually _will_ snap, and contrary to popular belief he doesn’t actually _like_ to do that. “Look,” he says. “You held the tie in the eighth. Yeah, you gave up six, but when it counted you didn’t let them get seven. You still had two outs left, you very easily could have. Anyone very easily could have, in the same position. But you didn’t.”

Blackwood sighs. “I’ve lost your last six games, Jon. I _know_ you’ve noticed.”

That makes Jon pause. He knows, from experience, that it’s just Blackwood dwelling on his shaky outings and projecting his negative feelings about himself onto Jon. He doesn’t actually _know_ that Jon’s been thinking the same thing in the privacy of his own head for months. Jon’s never said anything about it and he never _will_ say anything about it. He’s a _professional_ and until some act of mercy happens, they’re still teammates. Those thoughts will stay in his head and they’ll die in his head and they will never see the light of day.

Still. He thinks maybe he might put forth more effort, in the future.

All he says before leaving to hit the showers is, “you didn’t lose this one.”

*

Jon usually doesn’t mind travel day interviews. The reporters come in, they ask a few bland, repetitive questions about the upcoming road trip, and they leave.

He _usually_ doesn’t mind them. Usually, Elias Bouchard isn’t one of the reporters.

“Jon, what can you tell me about the game last night?” He asks. “I noticed you had some trouble in the final innings, can you give me your perspective on what happened?”

That asshole is out of his _mind_ if he thinks Jon’s going to sell out one of his teammates just to save face. If he thinks Jon is honestly going to play into the full-of-himself-sports-diva persona he’s been trying to craft for him since the day Jon was signed to the team.

He smiles his most pleasant media smile, which Tim never hesitates to tell him is anything other than pleasant, and lifts his gaze from the floor of the clubhouse to the cluster of reporters in front of him. Briefly, he catches sight of Blackwood on the other side of the media scrum, hunched in on himself, no doubt having heard the question Bouchard had just asked.

“We won the game,” he says. “And everyone had a hand in that.”

It’s naïve of him to think that that would’ve shut anything down. Not where Bouchard is concerned, at least. Anyone else likely would’ve picked up on his tone. The rest of the media circle _does_ look visibly uncomfortable as Bouchard continues in the same line of questioning.

Bouchard smiles, evidently relishing in the frankly very uncomfortable environment he’s created. It makes Jon wish today’s flight was earlier in the morning, so he didn’t have to deal with any of this. Bouchard’s smile tends to leave a bad taste in Jon’s mouth when it’s just a grainy image in the paper, having to be subjected to it up close is a nightmare. “I noticed Martin Blackwood—”

“Kept the other team from taking the lead,” Jon says before he can hear the end of that particular sentence. “I’m not answering any more questions about last night, so if we’re done?”

He hardly waits for an answering before gathering his things from his stall and heading out into the tunnels. The plane might not take off for another hour, but that doesn’t mean he has to stay in the clubhouse with that asshole.

“Thanks.”

Jon turns to see Blackwood coming up behind him in the tunnel. He inclines his head a little stiffly in acknowledgement. “Bouchard’s always looking to start something, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

Blackwood laughs, sounding a little somber as he does so. “Had kind of a point though, didn’t he?”

That makes Jon stop in his tracks, turning to look at Blackwood directly. “I’ll thank you to remember that Elias Bouchard has _never_ made a good point in his life. Especially not today. It wasn’t about you, anyway, he’s been trying to out me as being a team killer since the day I made my first start. You just happened to be an easy target for that today.”

Blackwood sort of looks a little taken aback by it all. Jon doesn’t blame him. He can’t remember the last time he talked so candidly about his reservations against certain so-called “media professionals” with someone who wasn’t Tim or Georgie. Given the fact that Bouchard is so intent on ruining his life for whatever reason, Jon doesn’t like to take his chances with the bastard catching wind of something and spinning it to fit is bullshit narrative. He’s surprised he said anything at all.

“Well,” Blackwood says. “Thanks. Especially since I’m sure leaving in the middle of an interview didn’t help your case with whatever article he’s about to write on you now.”

Jon snorts, catching himself by surprise yet again. When had he decided to be comfortable around _Blackwood_ , of all people? Sure, they’re both pitchers, and as a byproduct of the proximity inherent to that, they have to interact more often than most, but they weren’t exactly _close_. And Jon doesn’t let himself go in front of anyone on the team, really, aside from Tim or sometimes Gerry and that’s only because he’s known them since before any of them were even a blip on the majors’ radar. Even aside from Jon’s personal hang ups about getting friendly with teammates who seem intent on ruining his career—which isn’t true, he knows, but Jon wasn’t in drama club in high school for nothing—it wouldn’t make sense.

There are teammates that Jon has known for _years_ , that have cleaned up his messes and had his back and helped him through slumps, that he still isn’t close enough with to break the professional façade and talk trash about reporters or cynically laugh about the shitty things said reporters write about him because _yes_ it hurts him and _yes_ it gets in his head sometimes, but at least he didn’t let them write those things about his teammates. Better him alone than the rest of them together. He can take it so long as the rest of them don’t have to.

“Yes,” he starts, “but he was going to spin it against me one way or another, and I’m not letting him trick me into dragging the rest of you down with me. You don’t deserve that.”

“You don’t either, you know.”

It’s something Tim has told him countless times, albeit with about five hundred percent less swear words; something Gerry has mentioned in passing, in his own quiet way that consists mostly of taping his career stats at the top of his stall, all the most impressive ones highlighted in bright orange marker, and stealing Jon’s phone to keep it locked away during days when the press is particularly demonizing; something even _Melanie_ has made sure he knows, and she’s supposed to remain as unbiased as possible but she still comes around on days she isn’t slated to make the calls from behind home plate and takes him out for lunch and tells him that Elias Bouchard is the biggest idiot she’s ever met and if she wouldn’t lose her job she would probably kill him—even the threat of her losing her job isn’t _quite_ enough sometimes. Melanie’s surprising gentleness, her fierce and unflinching friendship, had been the weirdest by far considering how terribly she and Jon had gotten on at the start, and weirder still that Jon met her at every step with scarcely a thought for hesitation.

Hearing it from Blackwood is weirder still. Because Tim has known him for practically his entire life, Gerry for almost as long, and the three of them have always taken criticism for each other as personally as if it was criticism on themselves—they’ve always felt the sting of indignance for each other in those moments when the press are particularly unforgiving and are always quick to pull each other out of it by talking at length about how blatantly untrue all those articles often are. Even Melanie, with her trigger-happy temper and general outward disdain, makes sense. She looks like she’d sooner run you over than hold your hand through a panic attack, but she spends her off days bingeing bad ghost hunters on YouTube and goes all soft around the eyes when you bring up Georgie and Jon has _heard_ how she talks to her surprisingly very tiny dogs. They all _make sense_.

Blackwood doesn’t.

Because Jon has never really talked to him, aside from the spare post game “nice work,” or the more frequent and much more subdued, “not your fault.” Jon’s never brought up his frustrations with Blackwood’s performance, would never even dream of it, but he’s never exactly sung his praises, either. Sure, he’s given him the regular sportsmanlike reassurances after a particularly horrible outing, but he’s always made it a point to get through it as quickly as possible and he’s never exactly gone out of his way to sound anything close to _open_ or _friendly_.

The two of them aren’t close, is the point. And no one that Jon isn’t close to has ever made it a point to reassure him about his own worth, as a starting pitcher or otherwise. Even the rest of the team, who Jon _doesn’t_ have a weirdly personal unnecessary beef with, doesn’t make any of Jon’s problems their business. Jon _does_ have weirdly personal unnecessary beef with Blackwood, even if he makes it a point not to let him know that.

So why in the world would Blackwood take it upon himself to tell Jon that the things reporters write about him aren’t fair? That they don’t matter, that he doesn’t deserve them?

Why in the world is Jon suddenly staring blankly at the team plane in complete silence, no idea how he ended up there, with Blackwood still beside him, an air of nervousness hanging around his shoulders, something uncomfortable but not altogether unpleasant spreading through his own chest?

Jon realizes he’d never responded to the sentiment and, deciding he prefers being awkward over being rude, clears his throat around a thank you before the plane opens for loading and he ascends up the stairs to find a seat.

*

The first game of the road trip is…well. It sucks.

The loss won’t hang over Jon’s own shoulders, which he’s grateful for, but it’s bad enough that he still feels the sting deep in his bones. It doesn’t feel great, losing by nine runs, even if you, personally, aren’t in the game.

It’s even worse losing by ten runs. Worse, still, is eleven. The fact that they’re only at the top of the fifth is the equivalent of salt being rubbed in the wound.

Jon finds himself wishing they hadn’t put Blackwood in to try and clean up the rocky start. It’s not even about giving up more runs, they were doomed from the start in this one. They kept making sloppy errors, bats weren’t connecting, Oliver was having an off day and his frustration with himself after giving up a run on his first pitch hadn’t made anything easier for him. If there’s any loss that’s Blackwood’s fault and his alone, it isn’t this one. Jon can tell Blackwood doesn’t feel the same.

By the time he leaves the rubber for good, it’s bad enough that he goes straight to the visitor’s locker room without a second glance at anyone else in the dugout. No one reacts. Even Tim is silent.

Jon’s not usually one to barge in on anyone’s stewing, but he suddenly feels something very sharp right beneath his breastbone and, though he can’t quite make sense of why, it drags him up to his feet and carries him down the tunnels to follow.

Because it’s Jon, the first thing he says is, “you’re not throwing from your hips.” He winces even as he says it. This probably isn’t the time for a critique on Blackwood’s form.

Blackwood says as much. “I really don’t want to hear any criticism right now, Jon,” he says. “I’m going to get enough of it tomorrow, don’t you think?”

“No, that’s—” Jon stops himself, takes a minute to really _look_ at Blackwood. His hat is off, shoved deep in the back of his borrowed stall, team emblem facing away from him. The jersey once settled neatly over his shoulders is now on the other side of the room, sleeves inside out like he tore it off and flung it away from himself in a hurry. The sweat matted curls on his head are twisted in all different directions, like he’s spent the few short moments he had in here alone desperately tugging at it for some sort of relief.

It _hurts_ , so acutely, to see. Jon takes a chance.

There’s enough space left on the bench Blackwood takes residence in for one more person, and Jon lets himself claim the spot as his own without chickening out, angling himself enough so that Blackwood can still have his space. “That’s not what I meant,” he says. “We would have lost anyway; tonight was a bad game for everyone and there’s nothing you could have done to change that. I just mean—I thought if maybe you were a little more confident about your pitches you wouldn’t get so in your head all the time.”

At the advice, Blackwood lifts his gaze. “What do you mean?” The question is tentative, but there’s less heat in his voice than before. Jon takes it as a small victory.

“You keep all your power in your arms. If you want a good, consistent placement, at least thirty percent of that needs to come from your hips.”

Blackwood nods, a crease forming between his eyebrows. It’s different than the angry, frustrated clench from earlier. This one looks more contemplative. “So on the throw…”

“You want to lift your leg a little higher just before,” Jon says. “And then really lean into the twist. Less chance of you blowing out your arm that way, too.”

It’s quiet, for a minute. There’s still an air of tension in the room, hot and uncomfortable, but it’s fading quickly, and Jon tries to lean into it. Apropos of nothing, Blackwood nods again. “Thanks,” he says, voice rough. “You can, uh…if you want, you can go back out there. I’ll be fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Jon surprises himself by shaking his head. “I’m not really missing much. Besides, there’s still four innings left. We’ve got at least a couple more outs before they put Tim in as a last resort.” That gets Blackwood to laugh. Without his permission, Jon feels his lips turn up at the corners in response.

“Wouldn’t want to miss that, I suppose,” Blackwood admits.

It’s funny, how at ease Jon feels just now. He’s never really spoken to Blackwood before, beyond the normal teammate stuff. It doesn’t make sense that he should feel so comfortable, especially given the circumstances. But he does. Comfortable enough, even, to dig a friendly elbow into Blackwood’s side and say, “go get washed up. Take a minute, and we’ll head out in time to see Tim make a fool of himself.”

Blackwood straightens up then, finally, regarding Jon with a strange look on his face that Jon is hesitant to name. It’s gone before Jon can work up the nerve to ask about it, replaced instead with a friendly half-smile and a quick clap on the shoulder.

Blackwood sings when he washes up. Jon’s never noticed that before. It sounds godawful— _completely_ tone deaf. But it’s…nice, in a way. Listening to Blackwood completely destroy Carly Rae Jepsen in terms of both being out of key and entirely the wrong lyrics puts things weirdly into perspective. Sure, it was a bad game. Sure, they were all playing terribly right now. Sure, the atmosphere in the locker room was going to be a tense one once the final frame was played.

But right now.

Right now, Jon has succeeded in pulling Blackwood out of his head. Right now, he’s made a plan. They’re going to laugh at Tim’s horrible relief pitching, Blackwood will work on his pitch control, and the next game they’ll come out swinging. It’s not the end of the world.

Jon thinks it would be pretty lazy writing, anyway, for the end of the world to come about while _Run Away With Me_ was being mangled beyond all recognition in a locker room shower stall.

*

The first time Blackwood comes in for relief after they’ve talked, Jon isn’t the one he’s replacing. Jon’s first immediate response is to feel relief and then, for some reason, guilt. He’s not sure why he should feel _guilty_ , of all things. So, alright, he had judged Blackwood a little harshly at first, and he did genuinely feel bad about that. And it turned out that Blackwood was actually _nice_ and surprisingly easy to be comfortable around. And they _did_ have that whole heart to heart and everything, where he’d made Blackwood feel better even after it turned out that his version of a pep talk was, to put it mildly, not very good.

But it wasn’t like Blackwood had really _improved_ yet, either. He was listening, and Jon had no doubt he was going to take the advice to heart and use it to get better, but he’s had three days of practice between then and now. It’s not like three days is enough time to really make any sort of change to your game. You’ll forgive Jon if he’s particularly pleased that he doesn’t have to sweat through the results after a start of his own.

The thing is, they’re only up by four. Which under normal circumstances, sure, that would be a significant enough lead for an inning of relief, maybe even two if the offense can get a couple runs in during the bottom half, but Blackwood blew a six run lead in just four outs not four days ago, so Jon doesn’t really feel comfortable calling this “normal circumstances,” anyway. It’s terrifying. Three days simply does not make for significant improvement, Jon can tell you that much from his first year back after having Tommy John, and so really, it would make less sense if Jon _didn’t_ feel so full of relief and apprehension right now as he watches Blackwood warming up in the bullpen.

And yet he still feels guilty. The only thing Jon can remember feeling guilty about is when he was still playing college ball and he beat Gerry out for the last spot on the starting pitcher rotation. And even then, Gerry had ended up being a much more talented closer than starter, anyway, so really it ended up being more of a favor if you think about it. The guilt over that had only lasted for a couple weeks. Jon isn’t sure how long _this_ particular bout of guilt is going to last, but he has to hope it’s not going to be long.

Because he has no _reason_ to feel guilty, this time. He’s never even voiced his frustrations out loud before. Blackwood _doesn’t know_ that Jon usually feels a deep sense of dread whenever he takes the mound and the team isn’t already blowing the opposition out of the water. He doesn’t know that Jon is currently full of vibrant relief at the prospect of not having his own start ruined if this whole inning goes south. It shouldn’t be a problem, guilt-wise. Selfish, yes, because Jon should care more about the team’s fate than his own—and he _does_ , it’s just nice not to have to worry about yet another ultimately incorrect but nonetheless bothersome article about how Jon’s talent is slipping away and he has less than two seasons left in him before he has to either be traded or just retire entirely—but guilty? No.

Except every time Jon turns his attention back to the bullpen to watch Blackwood warming up, he feels this twinge in his chest that says he’s a horrible person for not caring more about Blackwood’s performance than his own stupid agenda.

Maybe _betrayal_ is more akin to what he feels. Like he spent the past few days reminding Blackwood that he had all the skills necessary to put on a show, putting the work in to help Blackwood _develop_ those skills—to work on getting him out of his own head when he was frustrated so he could stop worrying and just _pitch_ —and now here he is, acting like none of that even mattered. Like none of it was _real_ , like none of it made a difference. Like Blackwood could put in all the time and effort he wanted, but it would never make a difference and Jon would always be just pretending, would always secretly be thinking about how much better it would have been if they had called someone else in to take over the start instead.

It sounds awfully like everything Elias fucking Bouchard has ever written about _him_ , actually, and that…that doesn’t feel right. That’s not _fair_.

Jon knows, better than most, how profoundly shitty it feels when everyone completely overlooks all the steps you’ve taken to improve your game just to point out something completely inconsequential that nonetheless stings just enough that you can’t even be happy for yourself. Jon takes three steps forward, Bouchard points out six new flaws. Jon goes the full nine, Bouchard prints an article about the three errors in two innings that _weren’t even his fault_ , but now they mysteriously are. Jon makes a compelling case for the league’s starting pitcher in the All-Star Game for the fourth season in a row, and for the fourth season in a row a slew of scathing articles that are, objectively, _all lies_ , all but erase his campaign from public view.

It sucks. It sucks even more than Jon is doing the same thing to a _teammate_ , even if it isn’t intentional and even if he’s never expressed any of it outright.

Because Blackwood _is good_. He knows what he’s doing, he clearly has the talent, he just had one too many bad games however long ago and now he can’t stop turning himself in circles trying to get back to where he was. There was a time when Jon felt no different to Blackwood taking over relief than he did anyone else, and though that seems impossible now it isn’t fair of Jon to forget that just because he’s _frustrated_. Blackwood deserves for someone to have faith in him. If it's going to be anyone, Jon supposes, it might as well be him.

As Blackwood takes the mound, Jon’s hands go absentmindedly to the bill of his cap, turning it inside-out and back again. It’s a nervous gesture turned superstition, something he used to do to keep his hands busy between halves when he was jittery because of a rough start, and somewhere along the way he’s convinced himself it’s good luck. He’s not sure it works the same, when the pitcher in question is someone else, but he supposes he’ll find out soon enough.

Blackwood gives up two right away. Blackwood _only_ gives up two. He only goes the one inning, and there is a close call at the end with loaded bases that Jon will admit is not entirely his fault, but it’s still the best outing Blackwood has had in _months._

Jon makes sure he’s the first one at the dugout entrance when Blackwood comes off the field at the end of the seventh. “Nice game,” he says. And the man _beams_ , bright in the eyes and with a tentative smile playing at the edges of his lips. It makes something in Jon’s chest feel like it’s breaking wide open, and he isn’t quite sure why. But he takes Blackwood’s thank you—so soft and so genuine—and doesn’t think about how it makes him feel or why and lets Blackwood follow him down to the opposite end of the bench where he settles next to Tim.

Tim tosses a handful of sunflower seeds at him as he walks over, eyebrows raised high into the edges of his hairline. Jon catches one between his teeth and debates spitting it back in Tim’s direction before deciding it would be too gross. Blackwood’s thigh brushes against his own just briefly as they sit down. Jon lets his mind go blank, turning his focus to the bullpen.

*

It’s unfair, after the comparatively spectacular outing Blackwood had last game, that _now_ is when upper management starts talking about sending him down. A week or two ago, this would have delighted Jon. There’s no shame in playing in the minor leagues, especially when you clearly have the talent and you just need the time to reign it in a little, like Blackwood does. He would get the time to grow, under less pressure, and Jon could finally _relax_ when they send in his relief pitcher.

Now, though. Now Jon is just annoyed.

Jon’s had he doesn’t know how many foiled starts, and _this_ is the game they start spreading rumors after? _After_ he’s already had a full-on crisis that culminated in him deciding he needed to concern himself with Blackwood’s personal morale? Unbelievable.

They at least could have had the decency to keep the reporters from getting at the information. Instead, Jon has to get the news from a trashy article from a trashier news site that’s been reposted to death on Twitter. And then he has to walk into the clubhouse an hour later and watch Blackwood tug a BP jersey over his head like he’s preparing for his own funeral.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say; tries to imagine what Tim would say to him if rumors were swirling around about _him_ being sent down, but still comes up blank. Tim’s usual brand of reassurances aren’t generally suited to Jon anyway, he doesn’t think. They wouldn’t come out right.

Instead he gets himself ready and smacks his glove into Blackwood’s chest lightly before they head onto the field. “Throw some extra pitches with me today?”

Blackwood looks bewildered by the question. “I—sure? I mean…why?”

Jon shrugs. He’s not sure why he’s offering, either. It’s really not his business if a less than consistent relief pitcher gets sent to the minors. It might be better for him, even, take the pressure off enough that he can remember how talented he had to be to get here in the first place. Only, Jon thinks it’s a bit ridiculous that they only want to send him down now that he’s shown a little improvement and really, what do they want him to do, get used to a _new_ relief pitcher? At least with Blackwood, Jon knows what he’s doing wrong. He can _fix_ it. Getting used to someone else would just throw his whole routine off the rails. It’s only practical that he takes the proactive approach and fixes Blackwood’s quite frankly dismal display of relief pitching before they can send him down and bring up some rookie with no experience who somehow still thinks he’s god’s gift to baseball.

“Could use the extra practice,” he says.

“You or me?” Blackwood laughs as he asks, but something tells Jon that he doesn’t actually find the situation particularly funny.

“Well, according to popular opinion, every loss we’ve ever had is somehow my fault,” Jon responds. “Maybe this _is_ for me.”

Blackwood shakes his head, smiling a little despite himself. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I’m honestly surprised they didn’t come out with this earlier.”

“Do what?” Jon asks, feigning ignorance. “I told you, this is for me. Thought I’d practice my slider, it could use some work.”

“And you want _my_ help with that?”

“You have a good slider.” It’s not technically wrong. Blackwood _does_ have a good slider, it’s just that it ends up in the dirt more often than not, about four of five feet earlier than it should.

“I really don’t.” Despite the disagreement, Blackwood still grabs the glove form his stall and begins to follow Jon through the tunnels up to the field.

Jon rolls his eyes. Is this what _he_ sounds like when people try to convince him of his own good qualities after a garbage article was printed about him? If so, he should really thank Tim and Gerry more. It sounds exhausting.

“You _do_ ,” Jon insists, bypassing BP entirely to head further up the grass to the bullpen. “Just because it doesn’t land doesn’t mean it isn’t good. It’s a solid slider, you just need to work on the placement. _I_ have no slider to speak of at all. That’s why I’m asking.”

Gerry’s already in the pen when they arrive, sending a dry, slightly amused look in Jon’s direction but thankfully not commenting. Jon’s always been glad that Gerry was the other pitcher in their little trio instead of Tim. There’s no privacy where Tim is concerned, and he already embarrasses Jon enough without that extra proximity. At least Gerry knows when to mind his own business.

“Mind playing catcher for today, Gerry?”

An eyebrow is raised in his direction, a little higher than Jon thinks is strictly necessary, but Gerry agrees without much preamble, twisting his hair into a messy ball and stuffing it under his cap before switching gloves and moving to the opposite end of the pen. “Can I ask why you’re deigning to let someone else catch for you for once?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.” Gerry’s features remain flat, but Jon can hear the amusement streaking through it. “Just thought it was funny, is all. You’ve never let anyone but Tim catch for you, even at practice. Makes you wonder.”

And Jon knows where he’s going with this. He’s _right_ , of course, but _not_ in the way that he thinks he is. Yes, it would be entirely too embarrassing for Jon to ask Tim to catch for this uncharacteristic buddy practice he has going on, because Tim would be entirely too insufferable about Jon actually taking the stick out of his ass for once and making an effort to be friends with someone without them bullying him into it. Not that he would be _right_ , because this isn’t to make friends, it’s purely selfish and it’s purely because he’s attached to the particular routine he has and he’d hate to have to get used to a new one after he’d already started to put the effort in to improve it.

But Jon can tell Gerry thinks it’s something slightly different, something Jon does not particularly want to touch even with a ten-foot pole, something involving _feelings_ , and that’s just blatantly untrue. Jon doesn’t have any emotional input in this at all, beyond hating that he could compare his earlier attitude towards Blackwood to Bouchard’s all-the-time attitude towards himself. That would be absurd.

It’s only because Gerry is feeling particularly merciful that he doesn’t keep pressing after Jon sends him a warning look. Gerry does tend to mind his own business, especially when it comes to things Jon would really rather not talk about, but he, much like Tim and everyone else that’s decided to make Jon’s life their personal business, has always been immune to any sort of glare Jon has ever sent his way. He may not have said anything deliberately, but Jon really had expected him to continue dancing around the subject _just_ long enough to make both him and Blackwood slightly uncomfortable. He’s grateful that he doesn’t.

Gerry drops to a squat without further comment, the plain black eyes tattooed onto his knuckles winking as he clenches and unclenches his fingers. “Anything specific today, or am I just catching?”

Blackwood is still standing off to the side, very pointedly not contributing. Jon’s a little worried about how nervous he looks, but he chalks it up to Blackwood still feeling the sting of the article from earlier. He answers for both of them. “Just workshopping some pitches,” he says. “My slider is rusty.”

“I see,” Gerry responds, knowing. “Martin is much better at that one than you are, I’ll give you that. Glad you’re finally admitting it to yourself.” Blackwood looks a little bewildered now, when Jon turns to gauge his reaction to that. He can’t be sure, but Jon thinks he may have seen the slightest hint of a smile playing at the corners of Blackwood’s lips just before he turned to retrieve a ball from one of the buckets on the ground. Gerry shares a nod with Jon before he turns back.

“Alright Martin,” Gerry says, framing the plate. “Whenever you’re ready.”

The first pitch misses pretty obviously. There’s no amount of framing that’s going to make it look like anything other than a ball, but Jon can tell from the tensing of Blackwood’s shoulders and the strained “sorry” that almost immediately escapes his lips that Blackwood is _nervous_. And he’s always been worse when he lets his nerves get the best of him.

Jon’s not sure what to do about that. It’s a _practice_ , it isn’t like there’s anything to be nervous about. There’s no jeering from the crowd, no bases loaded, no two-run deficit hanging over his shoulders. There’s nothing for Jon to _fix_. He doesn’t know how to make Blackwood feel less nervous when he doesn’t know what could possibly be causing it anyway.

It’s a good thing Gerry’s always been better at this kind of thing than he is.

“Did Jon ever tell you about his first start, back in the minors?” he asks, throwing the used ball into the corner of the pen and repositioning himself at the plate. Blackwood shrugs. A slow grin spreads across Gerry’s lips, the kind that tells Jon that he’s about to have a laugh at his expense but that he means it with nothing but affection. “It was horrible,” he continues. Blackwood starts at that, fumbling out of position. Jon tries very hard to suppress a snort at the reaction.

The thing is that Jon was _terrible_ when he first started. He’d been good all through high school, yes, had his fair share of blowout victories in uni, but the minors were a whole different ballgame, pun only sort of intended. The other thing was that Jon had been kind of a cocky asshole when he’d first started as well. Riding high on his uni stats and his position in the draft order meant he thought a little too highly of himself and made more than a few mistakes because he wasn’t willing to listen to anyone’s advice. After all, when he was that good already, what more did he need to improve on?

Suffice it to say, his first outing ended in him getting pulled before he even got to make two outs in the first inning. His second didn’t go much better, except that _that_ time he got to play three whole innings before they decided he’d made enough of a fool of himself. He’d started out a lot like Blackwood is now, actually—all talent, no execution. The comparison makes Jon’s head spin. He doesn’t dwell on it.

Gerry encourages Blackwood to continue throwing pitches as he relays the story, peppering in anecdotes about how Jon had been so convinced that the reason he was playing so poorly was because one of his game superstitions was just _slightly_ off, not because he actually needed improvement. Jon had spent _weeks_ trying to figure out which one of his routines had betrayed him before he finally let himself come to the conclusion that the thing that needed work was just _him_.

The stories help. They get Blackwood out of his head enough to throw a few solid pitches, some even landing perfectly in Gerry’s glove without him having to twist to the side to make the catch. A lot of them still land in the dirt far too early.

Halfway through Blackwood’s next set up, Jon interrupts. “Hold on,” he says. “Go through your wind up one more time?” Blackwood obliges, somewhat tense, but nonetheless. “Right.” Jon walks over and settles a hand over Blackwood’s shoulder to move him into position. Satisfied, he moves both hands to hold tightly over Blackwood’s waist. There’s a noise that can only be described as a squeak as his fingers curl around the other man’s sides, and Jon _is_ too proud to admit the way his neck gets a little warm, suddenly, and so he ignores both events in favor of clearing his throat and pretending like nothing particularly out of the ordinary is occurring. Gerry coughs into his glove, a little more pointedly than Jon thinks he deserves, but otherwise says nothing.

There’s nothing to cough _at_. It was a little awkward, sure, but Jon hasn’t exactly made a name for himself with his exemplary social skills. That’s _all_ it is. Just awkward. Easy enough to move past. Not something he has to think about.

He _isn’t_ thinking about it.

He kind of is thinking about it.

Except that he isn’t because there’s nothing _to_ think about. Jon makes an average of two or three social faux pas a day, it’s not like this one is special. He’ll barrel on like always, like he’d meant to do it, like he hadn’t noticed, and he’d file it away for later and it would never happen again. Simple.

Jon is very definitely thinking about it, even as he guides Blackwood through a slightly modified wind up.

(Because he thinks maybe he kind of _wants_ it to happen again? Which is…an interesting thought. He’s not sure _why_ that would be the case, he’s only just decided Blackwood isn’t actually his nemesis, but…he’s definitely thinking about it.

Whatever, he can multitask.)

“You’re moving too early,” Jon explains. “You have to leave the rubber at the right time, or it messes up your trajectory. Try again.” Blackwood tries another pitch and Jon keeps his hold steady until the last possible moment. It still falls into the dirt, but this time it’s closer to the plate.

They go on like that for a couple more pitches, until Jon is sure Blackwood has the timing right. It’s a marked improvement, but something’s still not right. The trajectory is fine, the speed is there. The slider is Blackwood’s best pitch and it’s just gotten _better_ , there’s no reason it _shouldn’t_ be landing right in Gerry’s glove every time.

A lightbulb goes off over Jon’s head. The pitches aren’t landing where they’re supposed to, no, but that’s with _Gerry_. Blackwood has never pitched to Gerry before, for obvious reasons, but he has pitched to Tim, almost every time he’s taken the field. If Jon superimposes Tim over the space where Gerry is crouched, it’s perfect. Really, it’s all just a matter of Tim’s particular way of framing the plate. Jon can fix that, he thinks.

“Gerry,” he says. “Switch with me for a minute?”

“God, finally.” Gerry springs back up with a groan, stretching out his legs with more exaggeration than Jon thinks is necessary. “I’m not a catcher for a reason, you know? I’d like to keep my knees.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “It was half an hour, your knees are fine.” As they pass each other to opposite ends of the bullpen, though, Jon knocks gently into Gerry’s shoulder. “Remember to ice them when you get back to the dugout, yeah?”

Gerry covers Jon’s face with his glove, causing Jon to sputter for a minute as the leather laces get stuck in his mouth. “Yes, Jon, I know. I’m usually the one who has to remind you, if you remember.”

Which, okay. So maybe _sometimes_ Jon forgets to ice his knees after a long game because he’s too busy worrying about his shoulder and doesn’t think about how actually his legs are a big part of his pitching, but it’s not like he ever forgets _entirely_. Accidentally focusing on his shoulder so much during his post-game recovery that he forgets about his knees is a lot better than forgetting to ice anything at all.

But whatever. Not the point.

Jon replaces Gerry at the mock home plate, pretending not to be bothered by the unusual pressure on his knees. He can tell by the smirk on Gerry’s face that it isn’t quite believable enough. For a minute, Jon closes his eyes, trying to remember how Tim usually positions himself at the plate. He does his best to recreate it before nodding at Blackwood to throw a pitch.

It lands perfectly. Just like the next one, and the one after that. There are still a few misses in the bunch, but that happens to everyone. The point is, they’re consistent. And, more often than not, they’re strikes.

Blackwood looks visibly lighter when Jon calls it, getting up and striding back over to him. Jon doesn’t think he’s ever seen him look quite that confident, quite that unbothered by his performance. Not even during a low stakes practice at the beginning of the season. Not even during Spring Training. It’s nice.

“Nice job,” Jon says. “Show me how to do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, this fic really is about baseball. but it is also about yearning! the two go hand in hand, really. more on that in the next 2 installments!


	2. Act II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title change: at the intersection of broadway blvd. and championship way --> ninety feet to home
> 
> it just felt gayer!

Improving someone’s pitching is easier said than done, especially when your pitching coach is kind of a hack and you have to take on all of the work on your own because most everyone on the coaching staff seemed to have more or less decided it would be easier to just let him struggle along on his own until they could fairly trade him or send him down to the minors than it would to just do their job and see if that helped.

Jon can understand their confusion. It’s not like they really ever _do_ their job in the first place. How would they know?

But whatever, because what Jon’s doing _is_ working, even if they do have to sort of stumble along on some sort of winding, impossible-to-predict path to get there.

It doesn’t start out perfect. Blackwood gives up four, and Jon can tell he starts to get a little nervous by the end, but he pulls through; even ends up with the win after they pull ahead by a couple runs before he takes his last inning. It’s not as good as the last time, but it’s not as bad as it has been either. It’s still improvement—still encouraging.

_The day after, at practice, Jon sends him a smile, almost without even realizing. “Good work last night,” he says._

_“Could’ve been better.”_

_“Could’ve been worse, too.”_

_That gets a laugh. “Suppose you’re right,” Blackwood concedes. “_ Has _been worse.”_

 _And it’s not_ wrong _, but Jon doesn’t know what to say to that. Because he’s trying_ not _to ruin Blackwood’s self-esteem, in fact he’s trying to do the opposite, and besides, agreeing with the statement would be basically admitting that he thinks Blackwood is horrible._

_Which he may have, at one point, but it was incredibly unfair of him to think and he’s not going to admit to it now because that would be the opposite of helpful._

_He decides to bypass acknowledging it at all. “Shall we get on with practice then?”_

_Blackwood looks a little confused. “What, you mean—me?”_

_“Who else?”_

_“Well—yeah, okay, I just…thought that was a one-time thing, I guess.”_

_“I don’t quite think we can call what I’m throwing a slider yet. Might take us a while.”_

_Blackwood smiles and the first word that comes to Jon’s mind is_ brilliant _. He shakes his head and heads to the field._

The next game goes a little better. Blackwood does give up three, but he also goes a considerably longer stretch of time without being pulled. He doesn’t even show that it’s getting to him until the third run crosses the plate. When he comes back to the dugout, Jon lays a hand on his shoulder in acknowledgement. If Jon had to guess, he’d say it’s the first time in a while that he hasn’t held any tension in his muscles after coming out of a game.

_“Think we can bring it down to two next time?”_

_Blackwood’s face only shows the slightest bit of hesitation and insecurity when he answers. “Yeah, I—I think so. Maybe.”_

_He_ doesn’t _think he can, Jon can tell. But he’s willing to pretend he does. It’s a start, at the very least._

 _Jon tries to look encouraging. He’s not sure how well it works—doesn’t really try it often. “Well,_ I _have a start tomorrow,” he says. “Thinking of trying out that slider soon. Mind taking a look?”_

_Blackwood twists his lips to the side, scrunches up his nose like he’s tasted something sour. If Jon were a different man, he might call it cute. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Blackwood says._

_Jon does what he does best: plays stupid. “Do what? I’m just trying to expand my pitching style, here. Not sure what else you think me asking you to help me workshop pitches could be. I promise I’m not a secret spy-op, I’m not nearly good enough at puzzles for that.”_

_The scrunch on Blackwood’s nose persists, but instead of twisted lips it is accompanied by an amused, tentative smile. “Sure. I’ll meet you on the field.”_

It’s not all perfect. And it’s not a linear progression. Sometimes he still gives up five or six, sometimes he still records a loss, sometimes he forgoes the dugout entirely and sits in the clubhouse with his head in his hands and Jon will go sit quietly next to him until the mood in the room settles down and Jon starts talking—just nonsense anecdotes to make Blackwood laugh until he no longer thinks the world is ending because a pitch slipped in the wrong direction.

(Jon realizes that it is a little counterintuitive of him to condescend like this, especially when he is wont to do the same thing after a particularly horrible start. It’s something he’s working on. He thinks maybe that helping Blackwood like this puts it into an easier-to-see perspective.)

At some point, though, the good games start to outweigh the bad.

The first time Blackwood gets through a game without letting go of any runs, Jon thinks he’s going to crack wide open. It’s only one and one third innings, sure, but he’s never done it before. Soon enough, though, the novelty runs out.

And isn’t it amazing to have the novelty of something like that run out? To have so many solid games that it doesn’t even register anymore. That it just feels like something you _do_ instead of something you’ve accomplished. There’s still a bright grin plastered firmly across Blackwood’s cheeks every time he leaves the mound without giving up any runs. Jon still meets it with one of his own, still slings an arm companionably around his shoulders when he comes to sit next to him on the bench.

Instead of getting boring, though, it gets sweeter. Each no-run relief inning feels better than the last, ends with more laughter and excited conversation by the stalls. Eventually, Blackwood stops arguing about his ability to get through a game.

_“Your slider looks pretty good,” Blackwood says. “Probably won’t have to take these extra practices very often anymore.”_

_If Jon didn’t know any better, he’d think Blackwood sounded a little upset. If he didn’t know any better, he might say that_ he _felt a little upset, upon hearing it._

_“I don’t know,” he blurts without thinking. “Might take a few more, just to make sure I’m solid. Can’t hurt to practice more, right?”_

_And Blackwood_ blooms _. It’s the only word for it. His shoulders straighten out. His eyes widen. The smile that curls around his lips is blinding. Jon’s not even sure he knows what he looks like. It makes something light and warm settle beneath his rib cage. He doesn’t quite know what to do with it._

_Lucky for Jon, Blackwood speaks for him. “Yeah. More practice definitely can’t hurt.”_

The rumors stop. As far as anyone is concerned, Blackwood isn’t going to be sent down any time soon. No negotiations have been made for a contract extension, not so soon, but Jon has no doubt that they _will_ start. It would look pretty stupid if they didn’t.

*

Jon’s first career perfect game comes as something of a shock. He’s not really trying for it, doesn’t even notice what’s going on until he walks into the dugout sometime in the fifth and everyone is steadfastly avoiding him, giving him about three feet on either side wherever he goes. He’d just been trying to keep his head down and get through it, like always, but suddenly he looks up to the scoreboard to see what’s going on and there it is: no hits, no baserunners, no runs…a very discouraging message from the opposition because this is a road game and the stadium is obviously going to do anything they can to throw him off his game.

It doesn’t work, which is curious. Usually, when Jon is this deep in a game, doing this _well_ , all he can think about is how much longer he can go, if he’s doing _enough_ , what he has to do to secure a win before he’s pulled, trying to calculate what kind of a lead he needs before he feels comfortable handing it over to someone else. Usually he’s trying to figure out what he has to do in order to not be crucified by the media afterwards. All of that is curiously absent, this time.

He looks at the scoreboard full of zeroes, listens to the jeering taunts of the crowd, takes note of his teammates in the dugout purposefully ignoring him, and strangely feels nothing but calm. He’s come this far, right? Five innings without even so much as a baserunner wasn’t nothing, and he’d done it without even thinking. It didn’t make sense to worry now, when he hadn’t been worrying before and everything’s turned out as well as it did. Besides, there’s something about knowing that if he _does_ slip up—if he lets a runner on or gives up a run—then whoever comes in behind him will take care of it, that kind of makes him not _care_ , really, at all, whether or not he does. Even if that someone is Martin Blackwood. _Especially_ , he surprises himself with amending, if that someone is Martin Blackwood.

That’s not to say he doesn’t _want_ the perfect game, of course he does, it’s just that, for once in his life, he doesn’t feel particularly burdened with the constant need to _do better_. It doesn’t hang heavy over his shoulders like it once would have, weighing him down until the stress eats at him and the only thought left in his head is _if I don’t get this what will they say about me, what happens if I give it up, what lies are going to be told next, what will I have to do to_ fix _it._

He’ll get it or he won’t. And if he doesn’t, someone else will carry him home.

He gets it.

Pitch by pitch, inning by inning, strikeout by flyout, he gets it. And despite how empty the opposing ballpark has gotten since the start of the game, how quickly everyone left and the crowd of boos dwindled until it was no longer audible, the resulting cheer at the end of the final frame is the loudest Jon has ever heard it. It might have been nice, he thinks, to have gotten this particular career milestone at home, but somehow being on the road makes it ever sweeter.

You almost wouldn’t notice the disappointed sighs of the few stragglers leaving the field, for the way his teammate’s loud laughter and shouted expletives echoed through the stadium like nothing was stopping the waves from bouncing back and forth off the walls into eternity. You could almost forget you were even on a field, if it weren’t for the dirt being rubbed into his jersey.

Jon’s never considered himself a very poetic man, but he thinks he could try, if it meant being able to capture this moment in such a way that he would never be able to forget the way something deep in his chest bloomed when the final out was called, the way he felt like he was standing just a few inches off the ground as he stared in shock while the dugout flooded onto the field. It is, in any case, the closest he’s ever gotten to understanding _why_ anyone would want to spend so long pacing out lines and matching up rhyme schemes just to say something that could’ve been accomplished with two or three sentences of normal prose.

When they finally manage to wrangle the team off the field and into the dugout, he still hasn’t found the right words for it. The media circle finds him before he even has time to sit down and he has more words for him than usual, each one tumbling out of surprised and stuttering lips, warped by a giddy smile that hasn’t fallen out of place since the second he heard the sound of twenty-five pairs of cleats scrambling over concrete and onto the dirt.

It’s a much different atmosphere than he usually creates during a post-game interview, usually all noncommittal statements about how well the team played and keeping his gaze trained firmly on the floor beneath his feet, trying to avoid the overbearing pressure of eye contact while he tries his best to answer questions while internally dissecting every wrong move he made and wondering how to avoid doing the same thing the next time. The thing is, most of Jon’s post-game interviews have been steadfastly focused on what he did _wrong_ , regardless of any net positive outcome for the game and regardless of whether or not the media team was _actually_ asking him to divulge everything he thought he did wrong.

This is different. For once, he doesn’t feel like he needs to overcompensate or focus any attention on anything he might have done wrong. For once, he is content to just be pleased with his performance and forget about the rest.

They ask him how he felt, realizing how close he was to a perfect game. _Strangely calm, actually_. They ask how he kept himself from letting the nerves take over. _I just wasn’t worried about having to leave. We’ve got a strong bullpen, it didn’t matter if I kept the perfect game or not, as long as I knew they were there to bail me out after._ They ask about the new pitching style he’s adapted, if that had anything to do with being able to keep the opposition on their toes, with shaking it up enough that they weren’t able to guess at which ones they could hit at and which ones they should let slide by.

“That one’s all Martin,” Jon says, grateful to finally be asked a question with an answer that is easy to put into words. In the stall beside him, Martin perks up at the mention of his own name, a bemused smile catching Jon’s attention in his periphery. “I’ve made him take extra practices with me to show me how to throw a slider. He’s still leagues better at it than I am, but if it works.”

If it were anyone else—if it were Gerry, or Tim, or even, perhaps, Michael—they might have rolled their eyes and made a joke about how Jon was clearly trying to steal the one thing Jon had over them in order to effectively take over every position on the team. Instead, because it is Martin, he merely flushes and tries not to attract any attention to himself.

Tim has never had any such problems with having the attention all to himself, even when no attention was given to him in the first place. Especially when he’s trying to divert the attention away from someone who doesn’t want it. A nicely timed towel thrown at Jon’s face announces Tim’s taking over the spotlight.

“Boo,” he shouts, stretching out the vowels in a way that echoes the jeering floating through the stadium earlier. “Take responsibility for your own success!”

Just as Jon’s situated the towel around his shoulders, another sails in his direction. This one he catches in time to see Gerry recover from the throw. “Only losers thank their teammates for a perfect game, Jon,” he adds.

More towels and teasing comments join the fray and the ensuing chaos ensures that the media clears out not long after that. Martin catches Jon’s eye once the last reporter leaves the clubhouse.

“Thanks for not telling them the real reason we’ve taken extra practices,” he says, voice warm. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Jon shrugs. “Not sure what you’re talking about, Martin,” he responds. “I asked you to throw with me because you genuinely have a better slider than I do. The fact that you used the extra time to work yourself out of a slump had nothing to do with me.”

The bemused little smile from earlier once again takes up residence on Martin’s lips. “Right. Thanks anyway, then.”

Jon shakes his head. “I meant it, you know. What I said in the interview, I wouldn’t have that whole new pitching routine if it weren’t for you. If you want to keep thanking me for the extra practices, you could at least do yourself the service of taking credit for that.”

“Sure,” Martin relents. “Got to have _some_ thing so you don’t end up taking my job, I suppose.”

“You know, I expect this from Tim, but _really_ , Martin,” Jon sighs, injecting enough exaggerated exasperation into his words that Martin knows he’s kidding. “You’d be much more capable of taking _my_ job than I would yours, anyway.”

At the admission, Martin’s flush returns. “Please,” he says, “like they’d want _me_ to be a starter.”

“You could be. If you wanted. Who knows, maybe they’ll ask you at the end of the season.”

“I don’t know about that, they don’t even know if they’re—”

“Martin,” Jon interrupts. “They’re not letting you go. If there’s one thing I know, it’s good pitching. They’d be stupid to send you anywhere else, even if it is just the minor leagues.”

Small patches of pink still sitting stubbornly high on his cheeks, Martin smiles. It’s the same one from the interview, and even from just a few seconds ago when Jon had mentioned their extra practices. He can’t place it from any other time, doesn’t know quite what it means, but then again, he’s never been quite so good at reading people.

And then he says, “see you at the hotel, Martin,” and the smile grows, and Jon understands why.

It’s not like he’s particularly _avoided_ referring to Martin by name before, but, well… _before_ , Jon also liked flirting with the idea that Martin was out to deliberately sabotage him, so it’s not like he was exactly very _fond_ of him either. Besides, it’s not like they had even been friends until recently and using last names to refer to teammates wasn’t exactly _uncommon_. They were _athletes_ , it’s just the way it worked, sometimes.

Jon hadn’t really referred to Martin as anything, though, until now. He knew him as Blackwood, yes, but only in his head. When he spoke out loud, it was completely devoid of any names, formal or otherwise. Not first, not last, and certainly not a nickname. It’s strange, now, how it’s fit its way so naturally into his speech, to the point where he hadn’t even noticed it starting. So many months without saying anything and yet now he uses it as easily as he throws a curveball.

Stranger, still, is the way it feels at home in the shape of his lips.

*

Every other weekend, Jon has Tim over for an extremely lackluster dinner consisting of takeout from the nearest Chinese restaurant with delivery and a couple of the most over-the-top selections from the trendy doughnut shop down the street. It’s different than the usual dinners they share with Gerry the rest of the week in that Gerry tends to beg off because he knows the more formal, biweekly dinners are just an excuse for Jon to talk stats and run strategies into the ground while Tim listens patiently and helps him work through whatever’s bothering him about his game that month. Jon never formally invites anyone over if they’re just hanging out, just sort of expects them to show up and eat all his food and make fun of each other for a few hours before falling asleep on his couch and starting anew during breakfast in the morning.

And Gerry never has been one for stats, prefers instead to keep his head down and just do whatever, and that _works_ for him, somehow, but Jon doesn’t begrudge him not coming even if he does always make sure to invite him anyway. If Jon truly needed him there because everything got to be a little too much, which did happen on occasion, Gerry would come without a second thought; he always does. As it is, Jon doesn’t usually, and Tim knows more about how to adjust his game from behind the plate than Gerry would, so there’s no sense in making him suffer through Jon wondering if he should develop some more slow-pitch style pitches for the sixth time in a forty-five-minute period.

The way this particular night progresses, though, Jon thinks Gerry might have liked being present for their little strategy meeting for once, if only to make fun of him for it.

Jon’s just made his peace with the fact that dropping to an eighty mile per hour slowball is as far as he’ll get to developing any slow pitches without seriously overhauling his entire style of play when Tim redirects the conversation. It’s not something that bothers Jon, particularly when the night is getting this late and he’s already worked through everything that’s been on his mind. Tim usually does change the subject at the end of the night, so they don’t both have to spend their next few hours before bed running through numbers and worrying themselves sick over the league standings.

He doesn’t usually try to change the subject by accusing Jon of being in love with a teammate, though. That’s new.

“So, Martin.”

“My name’s Jon, actually. Are you doing alright? Can you close your eyes and hold your arms out in front of you for me?”

Tim rolls his eyes, unimpressed. “So, _Martin_ ,” he repeats. “He’s cute, right?” He punctuates the question with a comically large bite of his takeout, nonchalant as ever.

Jon promptly chokes on his own. “I’m sorry, _what?_ ”

“First of all,” Tim says, casually continuing to wolf down his food as he does, “please don’t choke to death. Coach would never forgive me if I killed our top spot in the rotation, even if it was an accident. Second of all—” this time, he punctuates his statement by stabbing his set of chopsticks in Jon’s direction “—don’t act dense. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I can assure you I do _not_ ,” Jon protests once he recovers.

Tim levels him with a look before his eyes widen and swallows in surprise. “Oh shit, you really don’t. My bad. Thought you would’ve figured it out already.”

Dinner officially abandoned, Jon arches one eyebrow. “And would you care to clue me in on what it is I should have figured out?”

Dead straight, Tim answers. “You like Martin.”

“I _what_ , _who_?”

Once again, Tim rolls his eyes. “Please don’t act ridiculous. Maybe you haven’t figured it out yet, but you can’t pretend this is shocking to you.”

“I’m not _pretending_ anything, where exactly do you think this is coming from?”

Because, quite frankly, this _is_ ridiculous. _Jon_ likes _Martin_? No. Not even close. At least not like _that_ , not like Tim is implying. Jon _does_ like Martin, sure, but in the way he likes his other teammates. Or, well, maybe a little differently than that, he’s certainly never spent hours alone with any of the rest of them workshopping pitches in order to save them from being sent down to the minors, but that doesn’t mean it’s _romantic_.

It’s more the way he is with Tim and Gerry.

Sort of.

Okay, it’s different from that too, but he’s known Gerry and Tim since before he started transitioning, of _course_ it’s going to be different. The difference isn’t _romantic_ though, he would have noticed that. At least, he thinks he would.

Would he? He would, right? Christ, what if he wouldn’t, what if he’s just—

“Jon, hey, relax.” A hand falls down over Jon’s right shoulder and his vision clears. Funny; he hadn’t even noticed he was spacing out. If he didn’t notice _that_ , what else is there he hasn’t noticed?

Another hand falls, this time over his left shoulder, creating twin points of grounding pressure on either side. He shakes his head, catching himself before he can space out again. It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t like Martin, he would know if he did, and Tim doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. That’s it.

“You alright?”

Jon’s not exactly about to give him the satisfaction of knowing that what he said affected him enough to actually _consider_ it. “Fine. Just wondering what it is, I suppose, that gave you that _insane_ idea.”

“No, don’t do that,” Tim says, “don’t shut down on me. You were _thinking_ about it, and something made you anxious. What was it?”

“Tim, it’s nothing, we’re _friends_ , can we please just—”

“Actually, no.” Jon tries to glare at him, but Tim just responds by raising his hands in front of him, unaffected. “Look, I’m not going to _hound_ you about it, and really I’m sorry I sprung that on you, I genuinely thought you knew already, just…think about it, maybe? I’m not saying there _has_ to be something, feel free to prove me wrong I know you love doing that, but…you spend a lot of time focusing on making sure the team doesn’t hit rock bottom. When’s the last time you let yourself think you might be doing something just for yourself?”

 _Think about it_. Okay, whatever. Sure, why not?

Fact one: prior to a couple months ago, Jon felt nothing towards Martin other than a mild case of resigned frustration that he felt unreasonably guilty for.

 _(Note: Jon has only_ known _Martin, properly, for a couple months, due to his own admittedly clouded perception of Martin’s person.)_

Fact two: a couple months ago, Jon started making sure Martin knew the losses weren’t his fault, even when Jon was occasionally unfairly convinced that they were, because he knew what it was like to be scrutinized and attacked by local media for just trying to do your job and he never wanted anyone else on his team to feel that same way.

_(Note: mutual hatred for Elias Bouchard was more than enough to bond with someone over.)_

Fact three: just as it looked like Martin was starting to improve on his game, rumors started swirling that he was going to be sent down to the minors, something that so inexplicably bothered Jon that he had taken it upon himself to ensure that Martin wouldn’t have to go anywhere but the team plane for road trips.

 _(Note: Jon was very particular with his routines, and having to get used to a new relief pitcher was much more of a hardship on these routines than just sucking it up and_ dealing _with it, head on, no matter how uncomfortable it made him.)_

Fact four: Jon had deliberately scheduled extra practices between him and Martin in such a way that it would look like _Martin_ was helping _him_ out and not the other way around so that Martin wouldn’t try to find another reason to stop believing in his performance, and for the most part it had been genuine—Jon really did want Martin to teach him how to throw a proper slider, even if he was using it as a gateway to subtly help Martin improve.

_(Note: Martin’s slider was very effective, when he wasn’t getting in his own head about where it should land and whether or not it would get him the strikeout. Martin was also prone to getting down on himself at the slightest indication that his performance wasn’t up to par, even if a formal critique on his performance had never been given in the first place. This was the most mutually beneficial solution.)_

Fact five: Jon found himself genuinely enjoying Martin’s company more and more, no longer dreading having to walk up to his stall after a loss and console Martin for whatever he did or did not do during however many innings of relief he played and even actively seeking him out in the dugout. Extra practices had become more of a formality than anything, and more often than not they were just around each other because they wanted to be. That much Jon can admit.

_(Note: this was a normal progression of events traditionally known as becoming friends.)_

Cool. He’s thought about it.

They’re _friends_.

(Fact six: Jon is deliberately ignoring several related facts, such as the fixation he has on holding onto Martin’s waist and the way his name has begun to fall ever-so-gently from Jon’s lips, as if it has made itself a home there.)

_((Note: these facts have been stricken from the record, as they have been deemed irrelevant from the matter at hand. At best, they can be considered confounding variables in relation to the topic being discussed.))_

*

It would only make sense that the next person to bother him about the exact same thing is one Melanie King, approximately two weeks later. Jon only _sees_ Melanie about once every two weeks, or else he suspects that, with his luck, it would’ve happened almost immediately. But that’s getting ahead of it all.

Melanie travels just as much as Jon does, probably more, and so their schedules don’t always overlap. When they do, though, they make it a point to get together at least once for lunch or dinner or whatever else and get caught up over what they missed. Jon usually goes on about bad calls behind the plate to get under Melanie’s skin, and she usually goes on about what idiot batter got too confident with the fact that a woman was behind the plate and argued a call for so long that she had to eject him for delaying the game.

It’s a callback to how they met, except that Jon maintains that his arguing had nothing to do with Melanie being a woman and everything to do with the fact that _that ball was at my shoulder, Melanie, you seriously want me to believe you made the right call_?

“Georgie says hi from her, by the way,” Melanie says as she lays out plates on the small, round coffee table of her hotel room. “She can’t believe you talk to me more than her now, considering how we got on.”

Jon scoffs, unwrapping the plastic from around the to-go silverware. “You didn’t _have_ to eject me for arguing that call,” he says, playing along with the familiar dialogue, “I was _right_.”

Melanie narrows her eyes, like usual, a thousand percent less contempt in her gaze than there was the first time they initiated this little song and dance. “Jon.”

“Right, sorry.”

And beneath it all, they’re both smiling.

Initially, this little script of theirs was nothing less than pure, honest annoyance with each other. Jon’s really not sure how it’s devolved into this little game they play, all smiles and poorly concealed fondness, but he doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Melanie’s a good friend to have—she keeps him sane when he feels like he’s going to burst out of his skin the next time anyone so much as looks at his throwing arm funny and she gets what it’s like to be trans and in baseball—and he’s nothing less than grateful for the strange, meandering path to their friendship. Doesn’t do him any good to dwell on it.

“Anyway,” he continues, “it’s not _my_ fault that she got a job with a different team. We’re barely in the same place as it is, and when we are if I try to see her then everyone thinks I’m selling secrets to the enemy just because we used to date.”

Melanie rolls her eyes and sets about dividing their dinner between the two plates in front of them. “No, _Bouchard_ thinks you’re selling secrets to the enemy. Everyone with half a brain knows you two are just close.” She swipes a finger along the side of a plate, saving the decades old fake wood table from being stained by the sauce threatening to drip off the edge. “Offer’s still open by the way, if you want me to kill him.”

“Thank you, Melanie, but you don’t need to lose your job for me.”

“Hey, my girlfriend is making general manager money, now. I could do it and be fine for a while.” She shrugs, taking her plate with her as she leans back into the couch. “Going out in a blaze of glory would be kind of nice, actually. Besides, he’s a dick to me, too, this could be a purely selfish offer on my part.”

“He’s a dick to everyone,” Jon amends. “You’d be doing the world a favor, really. Might even get some good, old fashioned hero worship out of it.”

“Oh, I _would_ like that. ‘Melanie King Day,’ has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Paid national holiday. Maybe a special fireworks show after games. Yes, that does sound quite nice.”

Jon snorts inelegantly as he reaches for the glass of water on the table in front of him. When he straightens up, he crosses his legs beneath him and settles more comfortably into the corner of the couch. Or, at least, as comfortably as he can settle on an old hotel pull out with springs that were probably manufactured sometime around the 1930’s—1950’s if he was feeling generous.

“So,” Melanie says abruptly, letting the vowel drag out like she does when she’s about to tease him for something. “Saw that interview you gave after your perfect game last week.”

Jon has no clue where she’s going with this. She’s already given him her congratulations once, in her own special way—sending him a screenshot of the box score on her phone with one singular thumbs up emoji—and she usually doesn’t make it a point to let him know that she keeps up with him outside of in-game goings on, even though he knows she does, because she thinks it’s too embarrassing. He decides to try and play it off.

“Aw, Melanie, you _do_ like me.”

“Idiot, I buy you dinner at least twice a month, _and_ I let you argue calls for a lot longer than I usually would for anyone else, of course I like you,” she responds. “Didn’t much before, but that’s not the point—your interview.”

Oh no. “What about it?”

“Martin Blackwood.”

Oh _Christ_. “What about _him_?”

“Oh come on, Jon, don’t be dense.”

“ _Why_ do you people keep saying that?”

Melanie quirks an eyebrow, smirk overtaking her face as she pauses with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Oh, so you do know, then? Who’s ‘you people’?”

“Tim,” Jon grumbles into his glass. “ _He_ seems to think I’ve been in love with Martin this entire time and I just haven’t noticed it yet. Now, apparently, so do you.”

“I mean…aren’t you?”

“What on _earth_ gives you all this impression?”

Melanie clears her throat, sets her plate on the floor in front of her. Her legs cross underneath her as she turns to face Jon. “Okay, look. It’s not like anyone but me and like three other people who know you are going to notice, but…come on. You don’t take to people that easily. It took Georgie a month and a half to get us to actually start talking after she realized the obnoxious pitcher I kept going on about was you. We hated each other for a good while.”

“I never _hated_ you, I just thought your strike zone was ridiculous.”

“And _I_ never hated _you_ , I just thought you were full of yourself.”

“Looks like we were both right.”

“Yeah, it’s why we get along so well.”

Jon snorts, leaning into the friendly shove Melanie gives to his shoulder.

“But really, Jon,” Melanie continues. “All I’m saying is, you looked a lot more open than I usually see you during that interview.”

“Melanie, I don’t know if you noticed, but the interview was because of a shutout. I was running on a rather large endurance high.”

“Okay, but you kept doing that bro-y sports talk thing where you’re all like ‘oh, you know, the boys were really good, I had a lot of help, I just tried to take it one inning at a time,’ blah, blah, blah,” she counters, rolling her eyes. Jon would _love_ to defend himself against Melanie’s impersonation of him giving a post-game interview, but unfortunately? She’s kind of dead on. “Until they brought up that slider,” she continues. “Your eyes did that big, shiny anime thing. I half expected flowers to explode across the screen.”

“Okay, _that’s_ ridiculous.”

Melanie falls back against the cushions, dropping the dramatic reenactment she’s been doing. “Alright, so I exaggerated. Like I said, it’s not something anyone who didn’t know you would have noticed. It’s just—you looked _comfortable_. You don’t, usually. And you talk about him all the time, now. The only people you talk about as much as Martin Blackwood are my and Georgie’s cat, and…and the cat. Just him.”

“I do not—”

“Do want me to show you our previous text conversations? I can get Georgie to send you hers, too.”

And she’s _wrong_ , of course she is, Jon knows who he is and who he likes, but the idea of being confronted with anything that might even slightly resemble evidence to the contrary sends him into something of a panic. He scrambles upright, nearly spilling an entire glass of water on himself as he attempts to wrestle Melanie’s phone out of her hand before she can open it. “No, actually, that’s—I’m fine on that, I think.”

Melanie looks like she’s won something as she slips the phone back into her pocket. Which, of course, she hasn’t; Jon just doesn’t particularly like the idea of her running along with this ruse all night and he _knows_ that if he plays along, lets her go through their messages, she’s going to be analyzing sentences all night like she’s still eighteen and sucking up to her English teacher.

“Look,” she says, “if you say you don’t like him like that, fine. I get it. But I just want you to remember, the last time you were into someone you didn’t even know you were already dating until about two weeks in.”

“I’m going to kill Georgie,” Jon responds, declining to entertain any of Melanie’s implications.

“Probably, but not for that.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

Melanie breaks out into a wide grin. “She showed me pictures.”

“Oh, _Christ_.”

“Tell me Jon,” she says, “how exactly did you fit those _terribly_ athletic thighs of yours into leather pants?”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Right, of course. Can I ask you one thing, though?”

“I’m sure I’ll regret it, but go ahead.”

“What brand of eyeliner did you use? It looked like it held up re _markably_ well.”

“Wet n wild, actually.”

“Fascinating.”

Jon hums, pretending to be put out while secretly being very grateful that Melanie’s let him take an out on the conversation about Martin. “Surprisingly great quality. Lasted forever.”

“I will have to remember that.”

“See that you do.”

“Hold up during games, too?”

“Mm, couldn’t say. Never had the chance to try it out, we always did the whole… _gallivanting_ thing in between seasons at uni. Outside of it, didn’t really see the need to go through all the effort.” Melanie nods sagely. “I have pictures of Tim, too, you know?”

And Melanie’s interest in Jon’s uni habits may have been performative before, purely for Jon’s benefit, but her eyes light up at the mention of Tim being involved. “ _Really?_ ”

“Really. Want to see?”

“You have them _with you_?”

Instead of answering, Jon opens up a folder in the photo gallery on his phone and hands it off. “I expect you not to use these to make fun of him, of course.”

“No, right, wouldn’t dream of it,” Melanie responds, but she’s already turned on wireless photo sharing on her phone and Jon can hear his phone chime almost instantaneously, no doubt announcing a notification from Tim himself.

Not that Tim cares, really. _He_ still has the leather pants.

*

On the eve of all-star weekend, Martin clears his throat a little nervously as things are winding down in the clubhouse. “So. I know there’s no scheduled practices because it’s a week off and all, but would you mind coming in a few times with me anyway? I know I’ve been doing a lot better, but…I don’t know, I just don’t want to lose it, I guess.” He ends on a hollow, self-deprecating laugh.

Jon wants to say yes so badly, his own bye week superstitions be damned. There’s something about the worry in Martin’s brow that makes Jon think he would promise him the world if he thought it could help. Which definitely is _not_ a revelation, thank you, he does not have _feelings_ for Martin, he just cares about him, like a _friend_ , in a _purely friendly way, thank you Tim._

God, Tim isn’t even here, what is he doing? He’d gotten so into his head that Jon can’t even have a simple conversation without even—

“Good luck with that, I haven’t seen him so much as look at a baseball during an all-star weekend since we were about fifteen.”

Never mind.

Martin looks appropriately shocked at Tim’s statement, looking between him and Jon with comically wide eyes. Jon thinks he might be offended if it didn’t look quite so endearing. “What, really?”

Before Jon can answer, Gerry materializes to do it for him. “It’s some weird superstition thing. He deletes SportsNet off his phone. Won’t even turn on his television in case a game replay is on. Full ignorance.”

“Yes, _thank you_ Gerry,” Jon sighs. Gerry grins before slinging an arm over his shoulder and tugging the bun loose from Jon’s hair like he knows he hates. “I just don’t think it does any good to dwell on baseball when I’m not currently playing it. Drives me crazy otherwise.”

The explanation does nothing to help Martin’s confusion. “Everyone has the week off, though? It’s not like we can, like, fall behind in the standings or something.”

“Exactly,” Jon says. “Can’t move up either, though. There’s no movement at _all_ , and that makes me anxious, so…I try not to think about it.”

“Okay,” Martin replies, stretching out the syllables like he still doesn’t sound convinced but he’s willing to allow it. “Wait—what do you do if you’re _in_ the all-star game? Do you just not go?”

“Jon’s never been in an all-star game,” Tim supplies.

“He _what?_ ” And Jon has to admit, the immediate indignation _is_ rather sweet. Tim is still wrong, though.

Gerry nods a little somberly. “I know, right? Overlooked every year. We think Bouchard has some creepy vendetta going on.”

“Gerry, —”

“Jon,” Tim says, “you look us in the eye, and you tell us your run for the league starter is never punctuated by a very timely article that somehow always gains enough ridiculous traction that whatever higher-ups in the league that are part of his freaky sex cult see it and decide not to consider you at all.”

“No,” Jon responds, “you’re definitely right, Bouchard’s a bastard and I _have_ noticed his most scathing articles come out at a very coincidental time every year, I just don’t like to think about him being in a sex cult with the commissioner and I _know_ that’s what your whole conspiracy is based on.”

“Fair enough.”

“What do you do all week, then?” Martin asks, like he can’t conceive of a world where Jon knows how to do anything but play baseball. Which, to be fair…yeah, if Jon wasn’t _Jon_ , he’d be a little shocked about it, too.

He opens his mouth to give some sort of vague answer, to mumble excuses about cleaning his flat and reorganizing his library, but Tim beats him to the punch. “Jon has developed a very specific routine of going to the city zoo on the first day of all-star break,” he announces with a smirk. “It’s very cute.”

Jon feels, like he does in most areas, the sudden need to defend himself. “It’s just… _nice_. The sun is out, no one’s bothering me. I’m not really expected to _do_ anything, for once.”

“He likes to coo over the big cats,” Tim adds, interrupting his explanation. “Doesn’t let himself get a real housecat because he feels bad if he has to leave it too often during the season, so he projects.”

“That’s—” _not technically untrue_ , Jon thinks. He doesn’t finish his protest.

“You should go with him,” Gerry suggests. “ _I_ would, but I’m just so much more recognizable than he is, no one would leave us alone.”

There’s a feeling that Jon doesn’t want to name that settles inside his chest with the suggestion. Apprehension, maybe. Annoyance. Could be either.

This is sort of _his_ thing. He’s never even asked Tim to come along. It’s become as routine to him as his habit of walking heel-to-toe from the batter’s box to the mound before he throws his first warm up at the start of a game. It’s not something he _changes_. Also, the way Gerry is leaning casually against the wall—arms crossed over his chest and lips turned up ever so slightly at the corners—tells him that the suggestion is not supposed to be an innocent one. Either Tim has talked to him as well or he’s made his own conclusions, and either way the two of them have always been something of a hivemind. Jon knows what he’s getting at.

And what he’s getting at has no logical basis whatsoever. Obviously. So—

“Really, I wouldn’t—I mean, I can tell it’s a bit of a _thing_ , so I’m not going to impose myself like that, or—or, you know, it would just be sort of—”

“You should,” Jon says. Martin stops mid anxious ramble, looking equal parts confused and hesitantly pleased. Tim’s brows disappear into his hairline. Gerry stays looking frustratingly casual, like it was exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for. That makes Jon pause a little, but. Well, it’s not like he could go back now. In for a penny, and all that. “It might be nice to have company,” he continues. “And you’re better conversation than either of these two, at least.”

“You’ve wounded me, Jon,” Tim says, still looking positively gleeful despite his tone. Jon ignores him.

“You’re sure?” Martin asks. It tugs at something, somewhere around Jon’s throat. “I get if it’s like a—a superstition, or whatever, you don’t have to—”

“I’m sure, Martin. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

So there they are. Tomorrow. At the entrance to a city zoo at opening time on a Monday morning. Because Jon’s friends made some weird comments about Martin being _cute_ and Jon being _into him_ , or whatever, and Jon was fully incapable of processing any of that in his own, healthy way, so he decided he had to bring Martin along to something eerily resembling a date just to prove them wrong.

Amazing. There’s no way absolutely any of this could backfire on him. His _real_ batting average is higher than whatever’s happening here. And his _real_ batting average is…well, he wouldn’t be using it as a point of comparison if it was that great, so. Make your own conclusions with that one.

Almost the second they’re through the front gates, Jon’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

_> > **Tim:** jon are u on your date yet  
>> **Tim:** how is it going are u guys holding hands  
>> **Tim:** j o n don’t ignore me  
>> **Gerry:** jon please this is important  
>> **Gerry:** jon tim is dying he needs this  
>> **Gerry:** would u deny a dying man his final wish jon  
<< **Jon:** Tim literally posted a video of himself at the beach five minutes ago he is not dying  
<< **Jon:** Please leave me alone  
>> **Gerry:** he could be drowning since then u don’t know  
>> **Tim:** yeah u don’t know  
>> **Tim:** I’m drowning right now actually please hurry we’re running out of time_

“Everything okay?” Martin asks.

Jon startles when he remembers where he is, who he’s with. He shakes himself out of it, silencing his phone with finality and shoving it deep into his back pocket. “Fine. Just Tim and Gerry being…Tim and Gerry.”

“They seem to do that a lot.”

“Oh, it’s constant,” Jon agrees as they skirt around an overly familiar peacock. “They’ve been Tim and Gerry since I was ten. It never ends.”

Conversation is light as they make their way around the exhibits. Jon isn’t used to having company for this sort of thing, and Martin doesn’t seem to mind. He very valiantly does not make a big deal of Jon _actually_ cooing over the big cats, even though Jon can tell he’s barely managing.

Between the lions and the alligators, there’s a set of stairs going down into the ground. At the bottom of the steps is a small cave with a bench, where you can sit and watch fish swimming behind the glass. Jon doesn’t mention that grabbing a pretzel from the cart just outside the steps and taking refuge from the sun inside the little fish observation area has become as much of a routine as the day itself has, and Martin doesn’t question it as he lets Jon pay and lead him down the stairs.

It’s mostly quiet company, picking at the overly salted soft pretzel that sits between them on the wooden bench and gazing, unfocused, at the brackish water behind the glass. Martin is the one to break the silence first, as he so often is.

“I’m sorry you didn’t make the all-star team.” He sounds a little hesitant, like he doesn’t want it to stir up any negatively feelings. It makes Jon’s chest ache for reasons he can’t explain.

“It’s alright,” Jon replies, trying to assuage his worries as much as he is brushing off how important the ASG is for him. “Doesn’t matter much I suppose.”

From the corner of his eye, Jon can see Martin shake his head, loose auburn curls flopping over his forehead with the movement. “No, really. You deserved it.”

A sad smile crosses over Jon’s lips. “Thanks. I think I did, too. Of course, I can’t say that, or else I sound like a complete prick. And I’ve got enough people trying to do that for me already as is.”

“You’re not, you know,” Martin says. “I’m sure the rest of them have told you that, and I know you don’t put any stock into what’s written about you most of the time, but enough people tell you that and it’s hard to remember how wrong they are after a while. You don’t deserve that, it isn’t true. I mean, you had no reason to believe I was doing anything but sabotaging your entire playing career on purpose, and all you ever did was make sure I knew it wasn’t my fault alone.”

That’s…well. Jon _did_ believe, at first, that Martin was genuinely trying to sabotage his entire playing career on purpose, even if he did know that it was an objectively ridiculous accusation to make. He’s not going to admit that, though, because Martin doesn’t deserve to hear that, and Jon’s made it his mission to make sure Martin never felt inadequate because of him. He opts to say nothing in response at all.

Martin nudges him a bit with his elbow, prompting him. “I know you had to have been frustrated, Jon. Everyone else was. I know I would’ve been. Hell, I _was_.”

“Maybe,” Jon concedes. “But it was—it was never about you, not really. More frustrated with myself, than anything. If only I’d done better here, if I’d been able to go longer, if I didn’t care so much what that idiot says about me in the paper…I’m sorry, Martin.”

A furrow appears in Martin’s brow and Jon has to resist the urge to smooth it away for him. “About what?”

“Everything,” Jon says. “None of this should be on you. The team losing, that’s…it’s not your fault. We all go through a slump, and you had a better reason than most.”

“Jon, you literally _just_ got through saying you never thought it had anything to do with me. I could tell you must have been frustrated because it made sense. I come in all loose throws and sloppy errors and it only ever seems to negatively impact you. It wasn’t a hard leap to make. Most people would have been frustrated with me.”

“That’s not—”

“But you never said anything about it,” Martin barrels on, not letting Jon interrupt. “Never showed it at all. All you did was help. I know you don’t want to take any credit for it, and maybe you really didn’t do anything, but you _did_ help.”

Jon sighs. He can tell he’s not going to win this one, but— “Still. I’m sorry I didn’t offer help sooner. I think I thought if I just ignored it all it would’ve gone away. Like you didn’t deserve me being upset so I just tried not to think about it at all. Seemed the fastest route, at the time.”

Martin pauses for a moment, considering. “I’m sorry I didn’t _ask_ for help, myself. I’m not great with that.”

“I see what you’re doing, you know,” Jon says, trying to lighten the mood they’ve created. “I could say I’m sorry for not seeming approachable enough. I’m very self-deprecating, we could be here for hours.”

Martin snorts a laugh. “Yeah, sure. Let’s just agree we were both stupid and neither of us is at fault?”

Jon is…probably not going to do that. He is _very_ good at blaming himself, for one, and he does genuinely believe he deserves at least a little bit of the blame for how long it took Martin to get out of his funk. But he can agree, for Martin’s sake.

“Sure,” he says. Martin gives him a look like he knows Jon doesn’t believe what he’s saying, but thankfully lets it go. A few moments later, he speaks up again.

“You know, before I was traded here, I used to think you were so cool.”

Jon quirks an eyebrow, amused. “Used to?”

Martin’s brow furrows before he realizes what he’s said and hastens to correct. “Oh!” he practically shouts, sound echoing off the walls of the small observation area they’re in. “Oh, no I—I mean yes, _obviously_ I still do, I just meant—”

“Kidding, Martin.” Jon tries to hide the fond smile threatening to overtake his face with a conveniently timed bite of soft pretzel.

A flush appears just beneath Martin’s cheeks. “Right. Yes. I just…thought it was nice. That you were so open about everything, you know, that you didn’t care. It never seemed like anything bothered you.”

“Everything bothers me,” Jon half laughs, “just not that. I’ve known I was a man since I was twelve, I’m _romantically attracted_ to men sometimes…couldn’t have hidden that first part in the first place and I was never interested in hiding the second part, either. I’ve got plenty of other things to worry about, and quite frankly what anyone says about it isn’t worth my time.”

“See, that’s what I _mean_ , though. I started out trying so hard to not draw attention to myself and there you were, just…I mean you never let anyone question you about it, never gave any specific answers, but it’s not like you were ever hiding either. You were there, visible, and you just acted like it was _normal_. And it is, obviously, it’s not like we’re aliens or something, I’m not—I just—I never felt like that was something I could do. And then you were there. And you were _great_. And it just…it didn’t matter. Made me think that maybe it didn’t have to matter so much for me, either. That maybe I could just…do it all, without having to try so hard to look like I wasn’t.”

Jon clears his throat, shifting a little on the small wooden bench. He’s not _uncomfortable_ , per se, but people explicitly telling him things like this has always made him squirm a little where he’s standing. So he does what he always does: deflects with humor.

“You’re not going to ask for an autograph next, are you?” he asks. “Because I have to admit, it’s flattering, but I don’t think this is very appropriate for—”

“Oh my god, shut _up_ ,” Martin says through a startled laugh. “You’re insufferable, really, forget I said anything.”

“No honestly Martin, it’s understandable, I get why you—”

Martin shoves the last bit of pretzel right into his face, effectively cutting him off as he tries to keep sea salt from going up his nose, laughing all the while. “I like you better when you’re self-deprecating,” Martin says, but there’s no truth behind it. His tone is light, his eyes shining. “I just _meant_ , I’m glad we’re friends, now. You make things more comfortable.”

Friends. That is what they are. _Friends_. It’s what he’d been so insistent to correct Tim and Melanie and Gerry and everyone else in his life on. Because Jon doesn’t like Martin like that. Martin doesn’t like _him_ like that.

Friends. It’s what Jon had defiantly invited Martin along with him today to prove. That he and Martin are friends and that Jon doesn’t have any hidden feelings and that he knows himself well enough to figure out when he does. Gerry and Tim don’t know anything. Melanie just wants to bother him, half the time.

Friends. They’re _friends_. He’s proven his point.

So why, then, does the word make him feel so frighteningly inadequate?

He gets his answer a couple hours later, when they’re both walking home. A formal decision had never been made for them to walk together, but somehow Martin ends up accompanying Jon all the way to his flat. There’s a nerve-filled moment, just before Jon climbs the stairs to the door when they’re exchanging “thank you for coming”s and “thanks for inviting me”s and “we should do this again sometime”s, where Jon feels like something is missing. And then, in a flash, so quick Jon almost loses his balance, Martin is gathering him up in a loose hug. It doesn’t escape his notice that he seems to fit perfectly there, gathered against Martin’s chest so that his cheek rests against one broad shoulder. Jon brings his own arms up to circle around Martin’s waist and that’s when it clicks.

The guiding him into a pitch, the wanting to do it again, the feeling that it felt _right_ , somehow. Tim teasing him about Martin being cute, Melanie bothering him about how much Jon talked about him at lunch, Gerry leaning against a clubhouse stall with barely contained mirth in his eyes as he insisted Jon take Martin with him today.

The way Jon stubbornly tried to explain it all away by just saying he was trying to help the team. He started talking to Martin with the intention of helping him improve for the _team’s_ sake, set up extra practices to help him get more comfortable for the _team’s_ sake, tried to keep him on the official major league roster all for _the sake of the team_.

(He started talking to Martin with the intention of helping him improve because he didn’t think Martin deserved to carry that weight on his shoulders, set up extra practices to help him get more comfortable because it pained him that Martin couldn’t see his own talent, tried to keep him on the official major league roster because _Jon_ couldn’t stand the thought of losing him.)

_You spend a lot of time focusing on making sure the team doesn’t hit rock bottom. When’s the last time you let yourself think you might be doing something just for yourself?_

Now, Jon was profoundly unobservant, he is fully aware of this, but he never thought everyone else would know about something like this before he did. They’re his own damned emotions, for god’s sake.

And yet here he is.

Standing on the front landing to his complex.

Thinking about all those extra practices and the warm feeling in his chest when Martin joins him in the dugout, sitting close enough for their legs to touch. About the way he’s found himself doing things for the express purpose of getting Martin to laugh, without the added caveat of trying to get him to forget about a bad game. The way he just likes seeing Martin happy, just for the sake of it, wants Martin to be happy because of _him_ above all else.

Realizing that, in addition to being profoundly unobservant, he was also profoundly stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the uni photos are of course a nod to the mechs but it's important to me that u understand my vision for uni jon here is that he was in a horrible punk rock band with tim and gerry and they played gigs in college housing basements. so they're not actually the mechs in this, sorry :/ the mechs are just too good to joke about


	3. Act III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **small content warning for this chapter:** this chapter includes a scene where a trans man expresses feeling dysphoria in relation to his chest. if this is something you don’t feel comfortable reading, please skip from the paragraph starting with the dialogue “Oh! Didn’t hear you finish up, sorry.” to the paragraph starting with the line “Martin’s eyes drift closed and a small, hesitant smile begins to curl at the edges of his lips.” the content of this scene is inspired by my own feelings towards my own chest as a nonbinary trans person bc projection hours are 24/7

“There’s a thread on twitter of every time the camera’s been on you when Martin comes in.”

“Shut up, Tim.” Tim gives him a look. “Wait, you’re serious?”

Jon’s not exactly worried. Teenage girls online may be more observant than they get credit for, but it’s not like anyone ever takes them seriously, as deeply sexist as that is. Besides that, you can get away with a lot when you’re an athlete and you do things that are less than straight, so long as they’re in the middle of a game. He could kiss Martin directly on the mouth each time he returned to the dugout and nobody would think anything of it, except that perhaps it was an interesting choice for a new in-game superstition.

Jon also doesn’t _care_. He’s never tried to hide anything about himself, not the fact that he’s trans and certainly not the fact that he is romantically attracted to both women _and_ men. That’s not the problem. He _would_ kiss Martin directly on the mouth each time he returned to the dugout, if he thought it was something Martin wanted (and if that level of PDA didn’t make him extremely uncomfortable in the first place).

No, the problem is Martin. Or, well, Martin _himself_ isn’t the problem, but Tim is scrolling through the thread for him, showing him his favorites, and if Martin sees _any_ of these then there _is_ going to be a problem. Because this is…not quite subtle.

Jon’s never been good at regulating his facial expressions; he’s been told on more than one occasion that, despite how infuriatingly closed off he is, he is surprisingly easy to read. This is something he knows about himself: he doesn’t hide his emotions well. Even so, the footage he’s met with is a little startling.

Looking over his shoulder as he leaves the mound, smiling wide and ducking his head when he notices Martin finishing up in the bullpen.

Pausing with his arms in the sleeves of his jacket, eyes brightening for a moment before he wrestles the rest of the fabric over his head, ballcap displaced and forgotten as he rushes up to lean against the guardrails, arms crossed over top.

Nodding lightly when Martin’s first pitch is a strike; eyes focused and intense during a jam with runners on first and second, melting into a soft smile as the baserunners are left stranded and the inning comes to a close; Tim nudging him on the bench and pointing in the direction of the bullpen, Jon straightening up instantly when he notices that Martin is warming up.

There’s a video included somewhere in there where Martin is leaving the field after a bad game and Jon corrals him towards the far side of the dugout, away from everyone else, steering him away from storming down into the clubhouse. Jon watches himself sling an arm around Martin’s shoulders in the video, sees himself mouthing words of reassurance that he can’t remember the specifics of until Martin’s lips quirk into a hesitant smile and he’s knocking a shoulder against Jon’s own. In the video, Jon is staring determinedly at the field before them, keeping up a steady stream of conversation, and Jon remembers what happens next before he sees it—Martin throwing his head back, causing Jon’s arm to slip off his shoulders; laughter taking the place of tension as his shoulders shake and he reaches over to swat the hat off the top of Jon’s head; Jon pulling his lips inward to hide his own matching smile as Martin knocks a knee against his and finally seems to relax.

The final post is a shot of Martin taking the field, followed by a cut to Jon in the dugout, dropping the bottle of water in his hands to clap along with the crowd as Martin gears up for his first pitch.

It is all, quite frankly, embarrassing.

“So I take it you’ve finally thought about it?” Tim asks when he’s done scrolling. Jon feels the blush building in his cheeks and knows he’s in for it.

“ _Yes_ , Tim, and you were right. Feel free to say I told you so.”

“Oh, I would _never_ ,” Tim says. “I promised Gerry he would get to do that.”

“Well, I’m sure Melanie will beat him to it, anyway.”

“No she won’t,” Gerry says, walking into Jon’s line of sight. “I told you so.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Right, thank you. You all know me better than I do, congratulations.”

“Nah, you give us too much credit,” Tim responds. “You _knew_ , you just didn’t know what it was. You do that a lot.”

“I swear, if you bring up Georgie, I’ve already gotten this from Melanie—"

“It is literally not our fault that you needed advice for how to ask her on a date when you’d already been on five together. Not sure how you didn’t notice _that_ one.”

And, okay, sure, that really _wasn’t_ Jon’s brightest moment, looking back, but listen. When you’re extremely unused to getting any sort of attention, let alone _romantic_ attention, and you’re worried you might be projecting—because in your experience you usually _are_ —you’re going to be a little hesitant to call things what they are unless you’ve been explicitly told. Is it really his fault if he just wanted to be sure?

Jon tries to defend himself best he can, even though he knows it’s a losing battle. “Well it’s not like she _told_ me—”

“She said ‘it’s a date,’ like, at _least_ twice that I heard.”

Which, _sure_ , but again: projection. “That’s an extremely common expression.” And it _is_ , Jon can’t be blamed for overthinking.

“What’s a common expression?”

 _Martin_.

Jon startles at the sound of his voice. The thread is still open on Tim’s phone, the contents of their conversation still ringing through his ears. It’s a good thing Tim has always had better reaction time than he has.

“Nothing,” he says, “Jon’s just reading stupid articles about himself online again.” Tim waves his phone in the air, too fast to see what’s on the screen, before locking it and tucking it into his pocket. “Something stupid about how he sounds when he gives interviews.”

Martin smiles, a bright, unhesitating thing that makes Jon feel like he should be the protagonist in a Jane Austen novel. “Thought you were the one who told me not to listen to all that? It’s not worth it, you said.”

Jon is still too busy feeling like he should be the protagonist in a Jane Austen novel, and _really_ , it’s just going to be like this all the time now, is it? Martin’s going to do as little as smile when he sees him and Jon’s going to short circuit and then he’s going to get traded because he can’t get over himself and _then_ —

Gerry kicks at his ankles, causing him to startle into motion before Martin has a chance to question why he’s been sitting stock still in the same position, just staring at him for the past thirty or so seconds. “It _isn’t_ worth it,” Jon says, busying himself with changing into his BP clothes. “I usually don’t bother, but sometimes a catchy enough headline slips by and you can’t help but wonder.”

“I’ve blocked my own name, actually,” Martin replies, looking shy as he laughs at himself. “Didn’t have much nice to look at, before, and I don’t really want to chance it, even now. It’s stupid.”

“Good idea, really,” Jon doesn’t hesitate in saying. “Saves time, doesn’t let you second guess yourself. There’s the added bonus of never having to see what Bouchard has to say about you, even on accident. Think you may be onto something, Martin.”

And there’s that smile again, and Jon almost chokes before he pushes himself into motion once again, pulling at the laces on his glove and keeping his view steadfastly on the contents of his stall. He _really_ needs to get over himself.

Tim, still standing to his right, snorts before knocking a loose fist against his shoulder and taking his leave to the other side of the clubhouse. Gerry catches Jon’s eye before following, raising his eyebrows with an infuriatingly relaxed smirk playing across his lips. Yes, _alright_ , he gets it: he’s transparent. They don’t have to tell him that.

Jon is suddenly very glad that Martin has mentions of his name blocked online. If he’s this transparent in real life, then he really wouldn’t stand a chance if Martin ever came across that thread on his own. Being confronted by his own extremely visible feelings was embarrassing enough, Jon thinks if Martin had to find out about his feelings the same way he would request his own trade and never look back. There’s really no recovering from that one.

Martin gets ready for practice quickly; faster than Jon, this time, unhindered by the same crisis playing through his head— _am I being too obvious, should I relax, am I the only one who thinks I’m acting ridiculous today, I haven’t had feelings like this for someone in_ years _, how do people do this, normally?_ He looks a little surprised that he’s gotten done first, used to coming in later and taking time to lace up his cleats properly and make sure all his things were in order. If he has any idea why Jon’s taking his sweet time today, he doesn’t let on. Jon’s grateful for it, if that’s the case.

A glove is knocked companionably against the back of Jon’s shoulder and he turns to follow the movement. Martin inclines his head towards the tunnels, looking for all the world like he has no idea that Jon is terribly infatuated with him to the point where seeing him smile twice in one morning has him feeling like his bones are made of air.

And maybe he doesn’t. Quite rude, though, Jon thinks, to have all that power over him and not even have the decency to recognize it.

“See you in the bullpen, after?” Martin asks.

“Of course, Martin.”

Jon feels himself smiling without really thinking about it. There’s no good reason for them to continue meeting up during practice, hasn’t been for months. Martin doesn’t need the help anymore, not really, and Jon’s developed his new slider as well as he’ll ever be able to. And yet every morning they’ll still go through the whole song and dance. Jon thinks they both know it’s stupid to keep asking, but he figures—or at least he hopes—that they both like the companionship of it too much to give it up, even if the original reason for meeting like this has long since been unnecessary.

_Throw some pitches with me?_

_Of course._

It’s a formality, at this point, but every time Jon asks and receives a yes answer, he feels like he’s won something. He wonders if Martin feels the same, now, hearing Jon’s confirmation. He hopes he does.

*

There’s a problem with their hotel accommodations when they arrive at the first stop on their road trip. It happens every now and again, doubles being swapped out for singles, adjoining rooms being split with regular old people on vacation instead of other baseball players. Usually it’s no big deal getting it fixed, but if they can’t then it’s not so much of a hardship to just deal with either.

Today it’s a mishap of the doubles being swapped for singles variety. It’s better than most accidental bookings, only one room getting overlooked. Unfortunately, that also means they’re going to have to go through the list of who’s avoided getting short-sticked on the single rooms most recently, and Jon knows for a fact that one of those people is him. Which, genuinely, he doesn’t mind. Or he wouldn’t, usually. It’s just that he happens to know for a fact that the _other_ person next on the list is Martin.

And okay, to be honest he _still_ doesn’t mind, but there’s a difference between _thinking about_ sleeping next to a man you have feelings for and actually _doing_ it. Add in the fact that Jon has only just recently admitted to himself that he _does_ have feelings for Martin, and the whole situation just spells disaster.

But Jon is a team player. Or, he isn’t according to certain horribly biased news outlets, but he _tries_ to be, especially so when he knows that aforementioned horribly biased news outlets would only use the opportunity to make him look like even more of an ass than they already have. So he does what he always does. He smiles that strained media smile and keeps his head down and tries to ignore the terrifyingly wide twin grins Gerry and Tim are sending his way.

It’s only a four-game series. That’s three nights, not including this first one—four all told. He can survive four nights. Hotel beds are big enough, right? He probably won’t even notice.

Hotel beds are _not_ big enough. That’s the first thing he realizes when he and Martin step into their effective home for the next four days. He doesn’t know if they make beds in single rooms smaller on purpose, but hotel beds are most decidedly _not_ big enough. They’re very small, actually. Way too small. It’s a hotel for ants.

Jon could fit on his own with little trouble. Maybe his legs would hang off the edge, but he’s always slept better curled in on himself anyway. With Martin though, who’s got about six inches and a couple jersey sizes on Jon, it’s going to be impossible. Well, not _impossible_ , not really, they’ll make do, but Jon is definitely going to _notice_.

Martin seems to catch on around the same time Jon does.

“I can um…call for a cot if you want? Or I can take the little lounge thing in the corner, no big deal.”

“Martin I’m absolutely not going to let you do that.”

“Okay, well I’m not going to let _you_ do that, so…”

Jon can call for a cot himself. He _should_ do that. He should be stubborn and insist on sleeping on that “little lounge thing in the corner,” because he’s smaller and it would probably be more comfortable than the cot, anyway. But you know. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, and all that. There’s a lot of things that Jon _should_ do that he never really _does_. So of course, what comes out of his mouth next is,

“I think we can probably manage, don’t you?” He busies himself with arranging his things, suddenly very grateful that his complexion is dark enough that you usually couldn’t tell he was blushing unless you were looking for it. As he pretends to search for his toothbrush, he hopes Martin isn’t looking for it.

“Oh,” Martin says from the other side of the room, and it sounds more like a squeak than a word.

And isn’t _that_ interesting.

See, the thing is, Jon has known Martin long enough now that he knows he only ever squeaks like that when he’s nervous, or upset, or otherwise feeling particularly emotional. Previous appearances by this sound include, but are not limited to: his first specific interview request after a solid relief outing, the last time Bouchard wrote something equal parts scathing and untrue and he’d taken personal offense, and all the way back to their very first practice together, when Jon hadn’t quite known what he was doing when guiding Martin’s hips during a pitch.

The other thing is that Jon is very good at repressing things that make him _feel_ things, which this most decidedly does. Because it doesn’t escape his notice that two of the three examples that his brain had immediately supplied him with involved _him_ , even if it might not have been directly _because_ of him, and that…well it _does_ something. Something that makes it decidedly harder to pretend like nothing is the matter with sleeping next to Martin—the man he thinks he might be able to _love_ , given the time and opportunity—for four consecutive nights.

Like he’s said before, there’s a difference between thinking about sleeping next to the man you have feelings for and actually doing it, but it’s a whole other predicament when you let yourself consider the fact that _he might have feelings for you, too_. Not that this definitively proves anything, it’s just Jon connecting dots with a hopeful itch in his chest, but it’s enough that it’s something that’s going to run circles around and around his mind until he either throws up from nerves or miraculously figures out how to use his words for once. It’s anyone’s guess which would happen first, but as it directly concerns him and he likes to think he knows himself quite well, Jon thinks any scenario that involves him actually _talking_ about things, especially things this personal, isn’t very likely.

But if he just bottles it up, screws the cap on tight, and pretends none of it exists, then he might just be able to survive the night. The other three nights are still up for debate, but this one, at least, shouldn’t be too bad. So long as the pressure doesn’t build so fast that the bottle explodes, of course, but that’s putting one too many worries on the table, and Jon is barely capable of handling the first one on his own.

He doesn’t notice Martin is talking until he clears his throat. “No, yeah, that’s—that’s fine. I just—I know you’re starting tomorrow, so I wasn’t sure if—”

“It’s fine, Martin,” Jon interrupts, trying his best to seem unaffected. “I’ve slept in worse places on worse road trips.”

“Really?”

“Tim and I had to sleep in a bathtub once in the minors because the bed had worms and no one could replace it or give us another room until morning.”

Marin blanches. “Well, I suppose sharing a bed with me _is_ better than sharing a bed with worms,” he jokes.

 _Sharing a bed with you is better than a lot of things_ , Jon wants to say. _Doesn’t have to be worms. Could be anything. Could be buying your first house. Could be winning the world series. Doesn’t have to be bad to be true._

Before he _can_ say it, though, he excuses himself into the bathroom to wash up for the night, muttering a vague agreement while he all but sprints to get out of the main room and away from that stupid single bed.

The brief respite that washing up gives him is over all too soon, however, and before he knows it, Jon is standing in front of the bathroom door, trying to gear himself up for what he knows is supposed to happen next. He could’ve killed another twenty minutes washing his hair, he supposes, but he hadn’t brought a blow dryer and that seemed like too much work for ten o’clock the night before an afternoon game, anyway. Besides, he could already feel the exhaustion catching up to him, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be able to stay up long enough for it to air dry. But now he _really_ needs to get out there, because the water’s been off for a while and Jon hasn’t moved in about six or seven minutes now, and while Martin is exceptionally polite even on the worst of days, he _is_ going to start asking questions.

Still, he gives himself another minute to consider washing his hair in the sink and just sleeping with it wet, personal discomfort be damned, before finally twisting his hair up with a spare tie from his bag and opening the door with a doomed sigh.

Martin is clad in just a binder and a pair of well-worn sleep shorts when Jon returns, and it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, they’ve all changed in front of each other so many times that it hardly even registers, but it still makes something catch in his chest, right in the space between his first and second ribs.

He clears his throat when he enters the room proper, very resolutely keeping his gaze above Martin’s shoulders, even though all he can see when he blinks, at the moment, is the barest glimpse he’d gotten of Martin’s stomach before averting his eyes, the constellation of freckles spread out across the skin there. Before Jon can torture himself too much, Martin speaks.

“Oh! Didn’t hear you finish up, sorry,” he says. There’s a shirt in his hands that he twists around and around with his fingers, no doubt wrinkling it beyond all recognition. It looks like there’s more he meant to say, and Jon gives him a moment to find the words. “Actually, I wanted to ask, would you—would you mind if I took this off?” he asks, tugging at one of the straps curving over his shoulders. As soon as the question is out of his mouth, he turns red. “Not like—god not like _that_ , not right now, I’m going to finish changing in the bathroom—don’t really think I want anyone to see me like that anyway, not that you’d make it a big deal, obviously, I know you—I just _meant_ —”

Jon tries not to smile at the way Martin trips over himself trying to explain, regardless of how endearing he finds it, not wanting Martin to think he’s making fun of him for anything. He _does_ interrupt, though. “It’s fine, Martin. You shouldn’t sleep in it anyway, you and I both know that’s not going to feel great in the morning, if you do.”

“No, I know that, I just—” Martin blows out a nervous breath, twisting the shirt in his hands more harshly. “I’m not usually…comfortable, I guess, even asking. Usually I just—and don’t get mad at me, okay, I _know_ it’s bad, I don’t do it _often_ —but I either just leave it or I wait until the lights are out and change later. And it’s not that I think anyone’s going to bother me about it, obviously none of you mind, you all _know_ already, I just…I’m not comfortable with anyone _seeing_ it? Properly, I mean. But I trust you more than most, and I know you’re…well, _familiar_ , and we’re going to be sharing _pretty close_ quarters for the next few nights, so I…I don’t know.”

And despite the nervous energy surrounding him, despite the palpable worry still emanating from Martin, Jon feels something warm sprout in his chest. He understands how deeply personal, how _frightening_ something like this can be, regardless of who you’re talking to and whether or not they already know about you. Being trusted with that is something else. “Martin,” he says, soft. “Are _you_ comfortable with it?”

Martin stops for a second, fingers stilling in the fabric still twisted in his hands, as he takes a moment to think before he answers. “Yes, I-I am.”

“You’re sure? I’m not—don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not saying you aren’t capable of making your own decisions, I just think…you asked me if I would _mind_ , but it doesn’t quite sound like that’s what you meant.”

“No, no, you’re right.” Martin flops backward onto the single bed like his strings have been cut, t-shirt falling to the floor as he finally releases his grip. “I worked myself up over this a lot while you were showering, actually, I don’t—I think what I meant to ask is…could you not look? Or—obviously you don’t have to close your eyes whenever I’m in the room, but if you could just pretend nothing’s different? I just don’t want to feel like it’s on display, I know it sounds stupid—”

Jon is quick to correct. “It’s not stupid, you don’t have to suddenly be comfortable with people seeing your chest just because those people are also trans. Just because I had one, too, doesn’t mean you need to show me yours.”

The tension begins to dissipate as Martin sighs a response. “Right. I didn’t _actually_ think you’d make a big deal of it, by the way, I just wanted to—”

“Martin. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, I know how it is. I won’t look.”

Martin’s eyes drift closed and a small, hesitant smile begins to curl at the edges of his lips. “Thanks, Jon.” With one more sigh, this one sounding nothing but purely tired, he kicks out his legs, letting the momentum carry him forward until he’s standing upright. “Right, now that I’ve delayed everything by a good thirty minutes, I think I’ll go brush my teeth.”

Jon hums his acknowledgement, finally moving from the space in front of the bathroom door to go settle in under the covers. Without Martin in the room, he can feel the exhaustion pulling at his eyelids, turning all of his movements into slow, aching things. He’s asleep almost before he decides to fully close his eyes, the quiet noises of running water and plastic tapping against the edge of the sink lulling him off into sleep without giving him time to worry about the fact that he is still, in fact, sharing a single room with Martin. That hardly matters if he’s unconscious.

By morning Jon has pretty much forgotten that he and Martin had agreed to share the bed instead of calling for any other accommodations. Until the light filters in from the cracks in the blinds and he slowly comes awake, bit by bit, to the sound of doors opening and closing in the hall and a rustling of sheets just behind him. There’s something warm and steady covering him, a pleasant pressure that he doesn’t remember being there when he fell asleep but that he nonetheless finds himself curling further into as he reluctantly gains consciousness. Jon has never fired on all cylinders this early in the morning, despite how often he _has_ to be up this early, and so it takes a while for all of his senses to come together and build the picture he’s in.

First, the warm pressure covering his body. Then, the rustling sheets just behind him. Something tickles his neck and he jerks just a little before settling in once more. He can hear a deep, steady breath, right beside his ear. He shifts and the warm pressure covering his body curls inward, securing him closer. It feels nice. He hums, involuntarily, and lets it pull him in, brings up a hand to curl around it in turn. The pressure feels oddly like an arm, he thinks, wrinkling his nose as he tries to figure out through the morning fog in his brain why, of all things, an _arm_ would be slung across his front at six o’clock in the morning in a hotel room two streets away from the opposing team’s ballpark.

The light coming in from the curtains gets brighter, forcing Jon’s eyes open, and that’s when he remembers.

_I think we can manage, don’t you?_

_Oh._

Jon’s heartbeat feels like a kickdrum in his chest. It’s _Martin_. Martin holding him close, arm curled tight around his waist, close enough for his hair to brush against Jon’s neck and for Jon to feel his breath ghosting over his jaw. Panic tries to set in, for the briefest moments, before Jon makes the executive decision that it’s simply to early in the morning for all that.

Instead, in a moment of weakness, he relaxes, knowing that the day’s wake-up call isn’t for another hour and a half. And if Martin isn’t moving or waking up in a panic any time soon, then it’s really no one’s business if Jon just lets himself be held, however unintentionally, while he tries to catch another hour of sleep before the phone rings. He can pretend it’s not happening, and then he won’t risk waking Martin up and embarrassing him and he can let Martin get up before him in an hour and they can both pretend it never happened at all and hopefully then they’ll never have to mention it to each other, ever.

Except it has to mean _something_ though, right? The—the squeak of an “oh,” _this_ , it can’t be purely coincidental, right? Jon’s no expert on things like this, but he has shared beds with plenty of people before and he’s never cuddled up to someone he didn’t explicitly have feelings for on accident.

Not that he’s wholly inclined to do anything about it if it does mean something—you know, the whole bottle it up and screw the cap on tight so he doesn’t throw up thing—but still.

Somehow, despite all the thinking and the hopeful connecting of dots, Jon does manage to drop off for another hour before the phone rings and when he does finally get out of bed it’s to the sounds of Martin already getting ready in the bathroom. Even though it’s what Jon had wanted in the first place, he can’t help but be the slightest bit disappointed.

*

As they get closer to the end of the regular season, people start noticing Martin and his performance more and more. He’s had a couple of requests to talk to him after he first started improving, but for the most part interviews about his performance had been directed at the rest of the team— _what do you think about Martin Blackwood stepping up in the middle of the season, how did you help him get out of that slump, what do you think it means for the rest of your season now that he’s turned his game around_. Hardly any of it had been focused on _him_ , no doubt out of some unfounded belief that his improvement was simply a fluke, that it wouldn’t last beyond a few games so it wasn’t worth it to get Martin’s perspective anyway.

But finally, with less than two months’ worth of games left, he gets the recognition he deserves.

He’s still nervous about it, Jon can tell. The handful of interviews he’s given since his improvement haven’t done much to give him confidence speaking to a media that has historically not had much more to offer than the same monotone questions about how he plans to get over his slump on rotation. And can anyone blame him? Jon knows what it’s like to be on that end of things—hell, he’s not the best at talking to the media when they _are_ being nice to him. Martin’s posture at his stall—hunched shoulders, looking at the ground in front of him more than he is at any reporters, arms crossed so that he’s holding his elbows—is extremely familiar.

In any other circumstance, Jon may have felt compelled to crash the interview to blow the tension. In other circumstances, Tim probably would have already done the same. As it is, the interview is full of nothing but glowing praise on Martin’s sixth consecutive outing without giving up a run—eleven scoreless innings with what looked to be the promise of more—and they both seem to be more than content with letting Martin sweat it out. Jon finds himself keeping an eye on him though, just in case. From the way Tim keeps looking over every so often, he seems to be doing the same.

Either that, or he’s trying to catch Jon’s eye so he can make fun of him for how intently he’s watching Martin while he blushes and stutters through his post-game. And honestly, it’s probably both. It’s been weeks and Tim _still_ likes to give him hell about Jon’s having to share a single room with Martin on their last road trip.

_So were there worms in this one?_

_No, Tim, there were not any worms._

_Better than worms?_

_Tim, I’m going to kill you._

_Okay, fine, but can you at least tell me if I’m better at cuddling than he is first? Fair warning: it_ is _going to hurt my feelings if you say no._

_Can’t hurt your feelings if you’re dead, now, can I?_

“Your contract is up next season,” someone starts, reclaiming Jon’s attention to the interview going on in the stall next to his. “I would say with all the luck you’ve been having lately, you should have a pretty easy time extending it by a couple years. Have you heard anything on that front yet?”

Martin straightens out a little, eyes wide and disbelieving, like he hadn’t even considered the possibility of an extension yet. “I, uh—no, actually, I didn’t—”

Jon jumps in without thinking. “Hasn’t thought of how long he wants to ask for, yet,” he says, trying not to flinch when the camera turns to him. “Keeps thinking he should lowball it, but I’m absolutely certain he can get at least five out of them.”

The blush coating the tops of Martin’s cheeks only grows. “Oh, I—I don’t know about that, that kind of sounds like—I mean, I just—you know, it’s—” He doesn’t seem to be able to get a full sentence out, too flustered to keep from tripping over his words as he tries to address the question.

Despite himself, Jon didn’t really think he’d get this far. Before he even _could_ think, properly, he’d just blurted out the interjection. Now the cameras are trained just so, so that the two of them are in frame, and the reporters in the little half circle around them are looking at Jon rather expectantly, like he should be the next one to speak since Martin can’t find the words he wants.

He probably should be, but here’s the thing: Jon hates talking to the media. Never has been good at it, even when his voiced stopped cracking and people finally stopped letting their eyes wander like they’d never seen a self-made man before. Even when the conversation is genuinely nice, like this one. He always expects them to want something—always expects them to be waiting for him to slip up so they can pick him apart him later in the papers.

Luckily, Tim catches his eye from across the room and comes to his rescue. “I dunno, Jon, don’t you think he’d get tired of us, though?” he jumps in. “Five years is a long time, don’t know if I’d put up with us for that many seasons in a row.”

“Don’t know if I’d put up with _you_ that many years in a row,” Gerry interjects, following suit. Jon feels his shoulders relax bit by bit, leagues more comfortable now that the attention is sure to be focused on Gerry and Tim’s ridiculous banter. A quick glance at Martin—flush fading, no longer stumbling over words that didn’t seem to want to string themselves together—tells Jon that he must feel the same. “Wouldn’t have a problem with me.”

“I’m not sure how to tell you this, Keay, but you _are_ a pitcher. That’s pretty damning.”

“Hey, so is Martin! Maybe that’s why he’d like me better.”

“Martin’s _nice_ , though, you can’t hate _him_. He’s like a puppy.”

“ _I’m_ nice!”

“Not like a puppy, though.”

While the tension has effectively been dissolved, and Gerry continues to fight with Tim over whether or not he has any rights as a major league pitcher, the small pod of reporters in the room still look like they’re waiting on an answer.

“No, they, uh—they haven’t brought it up yet,” Martin says, shaking himself to bring himself back to the task at hand. “I hope they do, though. It would be nice, I think.”

“They will,” Jon says, all confidence. “Offer you one. Even if I have to bring it up myself.”

And maybe it’s damning, the way he says it with such conviction. Maybe the declaration of _I will keep you here even if they don’t want me to_ is a little much. Maybe Jon should take up a hobby making neon signs and construct one just above his head that says “lovesick idiot” in bright pink cursive lettering. With the way Martin looks at him after he says it, though, he just doesn’t quite think he cares.

The reporters have the decency to leave before the moment can be immortalized on film, having already gotten their sound bites and likely severely uninterested in remaining in the clubhouse any longer than they strictly need to, but Jon isn’t so sure he would care even if they had. As it is, the fact that he has his two best friends still hovering over them—friendly bickering now faded into silence—hardly seems to register.

Jon doesn’t know how to describe it—Martin looks like he only has eyes for _him_. Pupils dilated, eyes themselves practically sparkling, lips parted just the slightest bit. Like he thinks Jon is something to…to _behold_ , like he’s precious, somehow, like Jon deserves the careful, calculated reverence that he desperately hopes he’s not misinterpreting, even while he’s sure that he must be.

“You would?”

Jon blinks. Had he said something? “What’s that?”

“Bring it up yourself?”

There’s a twinge in Jon’s chest, then. Martin sounds so disbelieving, like he’d never once considered the possibility that the people here might like him—might _want_ him. Like he’d never expected anyone to want to fight for him, like that. Like no one ever _had_. And maybe they hadn’t; Jon doesn’t mind being the first. He tries to make sure that comes through when he speaks. “Of course I would.”

Martin’s brows pull together. “Why?” he asks. Not accusing, just curious. He looks at Jon like Jon is a riddle and he doesn’t trust the answer because it’s just a bit too convenient for his tastes.

“We—” Jon stops himself before he’s barely spoken. _We._ That doesn’t sound right. Players come and go all the time, no one ever plays their entire career with the same unshakeable roster behind them. It might sound harsh, but the team doesn’t need anyone. Doesn’t need Martin, doesn’t need Jon, doesn’t need Tim or Gerry or Oliver or Michael. Players will leave and others will take their place and the team will work around it, just like they always do. Improvise, adapt, overcome. This is _different_ , something beyond all that.

Because Jon feels like he _can’t_ go on without Martin, like it wouldn’t be the same. He doesn’t want to have to find out what it would be like if Martin wasn’t there, and this time it’s not even because of his routine. Looking back, he’s not sure if it ever was.

Jon starts again. “I need you here,” he says.

“Oh,” Martin says, and it comes out like a squeak. Jon adds it to the growing list in his head, the one he keeps tightly capped to avoid having to talk about it.

“Well fun as this is,” Tim says, interrupting, “I’ve already stayed way longer than I have to.” He sends a wink in Jon’s direction and Jon tries not to react. “See you in the morning, Jon.”

Gerry takes his leave soon after, much quieter and much more subtle, with only a knock of his knuckles against Jon’s shoulder to acknowledge what he and Tim had seen. And just like that, Jon is alone with Martin, only a few stragglers hanging around the other side of the clubhouse, just about to leave.

Jon could leave, too, he supposes. He’s already changed and put his things in order for the next morning’s practice. Instead, he sits next to Martin on the bench in front of his stall, angling himself so that his knee leans up against Martin’s own. “So, what do you think, Martin? Five, six years?”

Martin’s cheeks darken once more at the mention of a potential contract extension. “Jon, they haven’t even—”

“Martin. Five or six years?”

“Fine.” The word is said around a sigh, but Jon can see the hint of a smile building at the corners of his mouth. “I could do with five or six years, I think.”

“You’re sure?” Jon teases, knocking their shoulders together. “Not going to get tired of us, then?” _Not going to get tired of_ me _?_ It had been meant as a joke, when Tim said it, and Jon knows that it _is_ , but Jon could also understand. Lots of people had gotten tired of him before. Sure, Martin likes him _now_ , but what’s to say he’d still talk to him so fondly a couple years from now? Six seasons _is_ a long time. Plenty can happen.

But when Martin shakes his head, eyes locked firmly onto Jon’s, it feels like he’s answering two questions: both the spoken and the unspoken. “Never.” And the thing is, Jon believes him.

*

Every once in a while, about once or twice a season, the stars align in such a way that Jon, Melanie, _and_ Georgie are in the same town at the same time. When that happens, there’s no way for him to avoid getting dragged into an impromptu reunion of sorts, despite what he knows the contents of at least one online article will say about him the next day.

It’s ridiculous. Georgie and Melanie are his _friends_ , he should be allowed to be excited to see his friends. And he is! But he can’t help but think about how every time he _does_ , no matter if it’s at his flat or theirs, someone has to go and ring the rumor mill and suddenly all anyone can talk about for at least one full week is whether or not Jon is going to jump ship to follow his ex-girlfriend to join her team on the other side of the country. Never mind the fact that it’s been three seasons since Georgie left and he’s still firmly in the same place, never mind that fact that Georgie has a _girlfriend_ , she must be seducing him to build up their team.

No one ever does this when they visit ex-teammates on other teams. They all spent an entire week having Graham show them around the city when he had been traded last season, and no one ever said a single word. It’s not hard to guess why that is.

Maybe Jon will start blocking his own name online, too. At least that way he’ll be able to visit his friends without having to spend the next couple days worried sick that general management is finally going to buy into all the bullshit and trade him anyway.

When Georgie texts him this time to tell him what day to expect to visit her and Melanie at their flat, he’s talking to Martin in the visitor’s clubhouse. His phone buzzes three times, hard, against the wood shelf of the stall.

_> > **Georgie:** tomorrow at 1  
>> **Georgie:** I already checked and u don’t have practice tomorrow so don’t argue with me <3  
>> **Georgie:** also melanie says u should bring ur friend ;)_

Martin catches him rolling his eyes as he types out an answer.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Hm?” It takes a while for Jon to process the question while he’s occupied stringing a response together. “Oh, yes, fine. It’s, uh—Georgie? You remember her, she used to work on the staff here before she got an upper management position with another team.”

“Right,” Martin responds, “Georgie Barker. She was nice.”

“She is. Actually, she’s the general manager here, and her girlfriend is in town this week as well, so she invited me to lunch with the two of them tomorrow.” _She invited you, too_ , he doesn’t say. He’s trying to figure out how to bring it up without sounding completely transparent. “You might know her, too, Melanie King?”

Martin takes a minute to think, stretching his practice shirt up and over his head to be replaced by his normal wear. “Oh, Melanie, she’s who you go out to dinner with sometimes, right?” Just as Jon is about to answer, Martin stops with his arms in the sleeves of his street clothes and stares. “Wait, hold on, isn’t Melanie King the umpire that ejected you for arguing a call?”

“Okay, yes, but I was _right_.”

“Not saying you weren’t,” Martin answers, pulling his shirt on the rest of the way. The laughter cutting underneath his words says differently. “Just think it’s funny, is all. Only you would make friends with someone you got into a screaming match with.”

Well. Fair enough.

“Actually,” Jon starts, “would you want to come with me? Tomorrow.”

It looks like it takes Martin a minute to understand the question, and Jon swallows hard. It’s not that big of a deal if he says no, it’s not like this is something _huge_. It’s just lunch with Melanie and Georgie—a casual thing between friends. Asking another, different friend to join them isn’t weird. It’s not weird if that other, different friend doesn’t want to come! Jon doesn’t know why he feels like his skull is going to crack open all of a sudden.

“What, you want me to come?” Martin asks.

And it doesn’t sound like he doesn’t _want_ to come, which eases Jon’s mind a little. It _does_ sound like he’s unsure if he’s allowed. “Yes, if you want to,” Jon answers. “We don’t have any practices to get to tomorrow, and it might be nice.” He very deliberately does not mention that Melanie and Georgie told him to bring Martin along probably for the sole reason that they would get to tease him about his little crush all night. That’s need-to-know information and all Martin needs to know is that Jon genuinely does want him to come along.

Martin goes a little pink in the cheeks when he answers, and Jon tries not to think about it. “I—yeah, sure. I’d love to.” The color in his cheeks only darkens further, and Jon tries not to let that get his hopes up.

Lunch itself isn’t as weird as he expects it to be. Melanie and Georgie manage to keep their teasing fairly low-key, and Martin gets on with the two of them as quick as he gets on with anyone. Jon’s starting to think it might be impossible to _not_ like Martin. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least five other players in the league that were as in love with Martin as he is.

Jon surprises himself by feeling like it’s over all too soon. It’s not that he usually spends the whole time with Melanie and Georgie secretly wishing it would end, far from it, but he doesn’t usually find time passing so quickly, either. He’s hardly even worried about what’s going to be said about him online in the coming week. For once in his life, he’s just _enjoying_ his time with his friends, without any added stressors. He wishes he could live in that space just a little longer.

As it is, however, it is three in the afternoon and there is a ballgame to be played in the next three and a half hours. They have to get moving if they want to show up on the field on time and, perhaps more importantly, if Jon wants to be able to get through his worryingly long laundry list of pre-game routines. Georgie knows him well enough by now to start clearing things away and making goodbyes, sending Jon out the door even when he finds himself rather inclined to stay a while longer.

“It was nice meeting you, Martin,” she says, as they’re crossing the doorway. “Thanks for double-dating with us! We’ll have to do it again soon.”

It takes Jon until they’re a couple streets away from the complex to realize the weight of what Georgie’s said.

_Thanks for double-dating with us!_

_Thanks for double-dating._

_Double-dating._

It’s a fairly innocuous phrase, on its own, and Georgie would never be so mean as to say it like that on purpose, but Jon knows what he feels and he knows what he _wishes_ and he is suddenly very aware that Martin has not said anything in the past ten minutes. And once Jon’s noticed _that_ , he can’t help but notice how very loud the city seems around them. Even still, Martin’s silence feels somehow louder. Jon doesn’t really want to talk about it.

He gets a few steps further before he realizes he _has_ to talk about it. The pressure in his chest where he keeps all his feelings screwed up tight suddenly feels close to bursting. He has to say _something_ before it all finally starts to spill over.

“So, you and Melanie seemed to get on,” he says.

The words burst out of Martin like he’s been sitting on them since the minute they left Georgie and Melanie’s flat. And he probably has been. “Georgie mentioned something about ‘double-dating…’” It’s not a question, but it’s not a statement either.

Jon tries to remain neutral in his answer. He can’t quite gauge what Martin’s reaction to it all really _is_ , can’t decide if he’s upset or angry or any multitude of things. He doesn’t want to screw everything up. “Right, about that,” he says, “she was just—"

“I wouldn’t mind, I don’t think,” Martin interrupts, voice small. “If it was.”

The words are a shock to the system. Jon feels like he’s plunged into a bucket of ice water, but he barrels on anyway, eager to keep hold of this thread of conversation. “Well, it…it wasn’t _supposed_ to be,” he stammers. “But I—I don’t think I’d mind, either.”

“You don’t _think_ , or?”

“I wouldn’t. Mind, that is. Very definitively, actually, I’d, um…I’d rather enjoy it.”

Once again, Martin is silent. Jon waits with his heart in his throat, unsure what to do next. Had he said something wrong? He’s almost positive he hadn’t, had merely responded to Martin with the truth, a truth that seems to have been very much mutual. But he’s never _done_ this before, not in this way at least, and he has no idea what he should be doing.

Before he can get himself too worked up, Martin speaks again. “I have had the _biggest_ crush on you,” he says through a laugh. “Since…well, since that day you followed me into the clubhouse and told me I kept losing because I wasn’t moving my hips enough, if I’m honest.”

Despite the warmth spreading through his chest Jon frowns, suddenly indignant. “Hey, I never told you—”

“I know, Jon,” Martin cuts him off with another laugh. “I’m just teasing you.”

Jon lets them take a couple more steps, feeling the giddiness spread through his bones, before he responds. “So that’s what does it for you, then?” he teases.

Martin knocks a shoulder into his, wrapping an arm around his waist for a brief moment to steady him when it causes Jon to lose his footing a little. “Don’t make fun of me, I’m being very vulnerable right now. Besides, it _is_ you. And _you_ like _me_ , so I don’t think you have much to laugh at, here.”

“Do you know when I knew I liked you?”

When Jon looks over at him, Martin is staring straight ahead, like he’s trying not to get caught. Jon can see the blush spreading high over his cheekbones regardless. “Is it going to embarrass me?”

“Embarrass me, more like,” Jon answers.

“Oh, well, then.” Martin’s tone takes on a bit more levity and he digs a playful elbow into Jon’s side. “By all means, carry on.”

“I was… _profoundly_ unobservant for a very, very long time. It was actually—do you remember the all-star weekend?”

Martin nods, glancing over at Jon to catch his eye. “And Gerry made fun of you for your routine and Tim made you invite me along, yeah. I always thought you looked like you thought you had something to prove, then.”

Jon laughs, shaking his head at himself. “I did. Or, I thought I did. See, they’d been under the impression for a while that I did like you. At the time, I thought I was inviting you along to prove that I didn’t. It ended up doing the opposite.”

When Martin stops dead on the sidewalk, it takes Jon a minute to notice they aren’t walking side by side anymore and he doubles back. Martin’s looking at him with a mix of disbelief and unbridled amusement. “You asked me on what could have very charitably been called a date under certain circumstances—what I’m sure _Tim_ was thinking of as a date at the time—to _prove_ to yourself that you didn’t like me?”

“Yes?”

“You’re incredible.” And though Martin is laughing as he says it, it sounds like he means it. “So, what, I made you choke on a soft pretzel and you thought ‘this is it’?”

“More or less,” Jon answers, laughing at himself once more. “I’d been thinking about it for a while; I’m never really any good at these things. But then _you_ mentioned that we were friends, and for some reason it didn’t sit right with me. Then you walked me home, and you hugged me before you left, and I…well I thought about a lot of things, after that, and suddenly they all made a lot more sense. I think I probably liked you from the very beginning and I was just too stupid to notice it.”

“The very beginning?”

Jon looks up to gauge Martin’s expression and nearly loses all cognitive thought. He looks so pleased with himself, like he’s _won_. Like he’s won and Jon’s the prize. It’s an exact mirror image of the way Martin had been looking at him the other day during his interview, and he can’t help but smile. Martin _had_ been looking at him like he was precious, like he was something to behold, because to Martin he _was_. Having a name for the expression, knowing that it was because Martin _wanted_ him, like this, made his heart beat a different rhythm in his chest.

“The very beginning,” he repeats.

Martin looks very much like he’s trying to keep himself from smiling, cheeks sucked in in that telltale way where you know he’s biting down on them to keep his expression in check; Jon wishes he wouldn’t. “Cool,” he says. “I, um—can I walk you home, then? To the hotel, that is.”

Jon wants to laugh. They’re going to the same place—to the same _room_ , even—the idea of Martin asking to walk him home when it’s a hotel room that the both of them are sharing during a three-game series is quite frankly ridiculous. Yet somehow, this feels all the more important. Somehow, Jon finds that there’s nothing he wants more.

“Please.”

And home is only ever ninety feet away, or so they say, but Jon has been a pitcher all his life—he’s always been much closer than that. Walking beside Martin underneath the warm afternoon sun, hands brushing nervously together every step or two, he feels closer still.

*

There’s an article taped up in Martin’s stall when Jon shows up to practice the next morning. He already knows what it says. It had come out earlier that morning and Jon had briefly toyed with the idea of sending Martin the link before he figured that something like this was bound to happen anyway. Gerry was very fond of his method of highlighting positive articles to boost morale and Jon wasn’t about to steal that thunder.

Martin doesn’t immediately understand what’s happening, not before he has the chance to get closer and read it. “Am I being hazed?” he asks, pausing with his shirt halfway over his head.

It makes Jon laugh. “Sasha wrote it,” he says. “I was going to send it to you this morning, but Gerry does like to have his fun.” Across the visitor’s clubhouse, Gerry lifts his cap into the air as a cheers. Jon thinks Martin might be blushing. He’s not sure; Martin’s shirt is still half stuck over one ear.

Martin finally removes his shirt to reveal a confused indent between his brows. “Sasha James? What does she have to say about _me_?”

The only time anyone in the clubhouse ever gets excited about an article that’s been written about them, it’s because Sasha’s name is on the byline. She actually knows what she’s talking about, for one, unlike a few reporters Jon could name. She’s always objective, but she’s never mean. She gives genuine constructive criticism and she always keeps her tone light.

If she singles you out in a headline, though. Well, there’s a reason Gerry’s taped this particular article to the inside of Martin’s stall.

 **_Why Martin Blackwood Deserves a Contract Extension  
_ ** _Sasha James_

The little indent between Martin’s eyebrows stays for a minute before being smoothed away, bit by bit, by the nervous smile playing at the edges of his lips. A reddish hue starts to bloom underneath the tan skin of his nose. Jon doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so breathtaking.

“Wow.” The word is little more than a breath, tumbling rather inelegantly out of his mouth on a shaky exhale.

Jon knocks the toe of his shoe against Martin’s ankle. As if he’s forgotten where he was, Martin snaps to attention. “Oh,” he says, “right, sorry.” He blinks a few times, clears his throat. Opens his mouth, closes it again. Opens his mouth again. Says nothing.

Jon smiles, gives a quick one-two tap to Martin’s ankle once more. Like Martin, he’s not sure what to say. He wants to say he’s proud of him. He wants to say that this is something the entire team has known for a long time. He wants to say that no one works harder and there’s no one he trusts more to come in as his relief. That it’s been so long since Jon has been able to picture what it would be like to play _without_ the reassurance of Martin waiting in the bullpen that now he can’t believe he was once of the opinion that Martin would be better off in the minors. Jon kind of wants to say he loves him, if he’s being honest.

Despite everything that had happened the day before, despite both of them admitting that neither would be opposed to being romantically involved— _actively wanting it_ , even—it all seems like too much.

So he gets up and takes the hat from the shelf in Martin’s stall and pulls it over his curls and straightens it out so that the logo faces forward. He doesn’t do it perfectly. Jon’s put it on back-first, causing all of Martin’s hair to spill out the front and fall into his eyes. He thinks the sentiment is there, though. Martin’s smile settles into something softer, more at ease, when Jon taps at the brim gently with his knuckles, and Jon figures that means he knows.

Jon is suddenly extremely aware that everyone is very pointedly minding their own business in the way that means they are almost certainly trying to eavesdrop. “Find me in the bullpen when you’re done?” he asks, eager to get away. “I still can’t seem to get that slider quite as sharp as you do.”

He hardly waits for an answer before ascending the stairs to the field, trusting by now that Martin will be along without much time for waiting; trusting by now that their shared practices had only ever been excuses to feel closer, anyway. Jon only has to get halfway through a few warm-up stretches before Martin is jogging across the length of the field to join him.

It’s a relatively slow day, neither of them expected to take the mound this afternoon, and so the two of them are given the go ahead to leave practice early. Jon trails behind for a minute to ask Tim about something, and when he makes it back to the clubhouse Martin is standing in front of his stall once more, re-reading the article he’s left taped there.

“She’s right, you know.”

Martin startles when he realizes how close Jon’s gotten. Jon, for his part, doesn’t notice how close he’s gotten himself until Martin spins around and Jon is suddenly picking out small flecks of green on the outer edges of his irises. Jon _should_ step back, give them more space. He stays where he is.

When Martin recovers, he asks, “you think so?” And it is so soft and so melted that it sounds like he’s talking about something else.

“Never been more sure of anything.” And it is both an answer to the question on the surface as well as the declaration that Martin is asking for.

Somehow, Martin gets closer. Jon has to crane his neck a little to maintain eye contact. He’s aware that he’s starting to go cross-eyed, Martin’s features disappearing in some places and blurring together in others, but he can’t quite bring himself to care.

“Think they’ll go for it?” Martin asks. He’s close enough that his breath stirs the strands of hair that fall out from the edges of Jon’s cap.

“Be stupid not to, don’t you think?” Jon is desperately trying to keep maintaining eye contact as he speaks, tipping his head back further and straining to keep his vision in focus as one of them—maybe both, Jon’s lost the ability to tell—continues to shuffle forward. Fingers brush against the back of Jon’s hand and he becomes hyperaware of every single point of contact between them.

Martin’s fingers, now purposefully tracing hesitant lines across his knuckles. The leg slotted between his own, allowing the two of them to become ever closer. The place where the tip of Martin’s nose traces along the side of Jon’s. Jon himself has given up on trying to keep his vision in focus, letting his lashes flutter against the skin of Martin’s cheek as his eyelids fall to half mast, hazy and contented.

“How long?” His lips just barely brush over Jon’s cupid’s bow as he speaks. It’s not a kiss, not quite; you couldn’t call it much more than very close talking and yet, all the same, it causes Jon’s spine to go a little molten.

It’s hard to keep up with the double meaning in their conversation now, the undercurrent beneath the contract extension that speaks to something more, when all of Jon’s focus is in keeping his knees from giving out beneath him. There’s a part of him that wants to let go, to let himself crash clumsily to the ground, just to see if Martin would catch him. Jon thinks he would, thinks he would loop his arms gently around Jon’s waist and pull him close, letting him regain his balance for a moment before moving to set him gently on the bench behind him. It’s more than tempting.

Instead: “As long as you asked for, I’d venture.”

Martin’s breath leaves him in a rush, warm against Jon’s mouth. Jon’s lips part, almost of their own volition. “Jon,” Martin says, slightly choked, “do you—?”

And Jon is already humming the affirmative, tangling a hand in the curls at the nape of Martin’s neck to pull him in, to finally slot their mouths together, to trace the seam of Martin’s lips with his tongue. And then:

“Martin! Have you checked your phone at all yet? I think you’re going to want to see this.”

Jon’s never moved so fast as he does then, springing backwards with a quickness that almost leaves him dizzy as Tim’s voice rings out across the room. He can still feel the featherlight brush of Martin’s lips against his skin; it takes everything he has not to bring up a hand to trace over the area with his fingertips. Instead he scrambles to take a seat in his own stall, trying to look busy with untying his laces as Tim bursts into the room with the rest of the team hot on his heels.

Martin doesn’t seem to have recovered quite yet, stammering through his response even as Tim crashes into him, half dangling from his shoulders. “Wha—Tim? What are you doing, what is it?”

“You’re getting the extension,” Tim says. “Four years, just announced the offer not five minutes ago. Probably extend it formally before you leave.”

It snaps Martin out of his stuttering, blushing cheeks replaced with glittering eyes blown wide as he lets out a high-pitched exclamation. Jon goes a little soft in the chest, watching unguarded as Martin grabs onto Tim and lifts him unceremoniously into the air, spinning him in a quick circle.

Jon is very aware of how he looks, watching this all unfold. The flush still sitting stubbornly high over his cheekbones, the slight shake that lingers in his fingers, the rapid rise and fall of his chest where he’s still just a touch out of breath. The way his gaze has turned soft despite it all. Besotted, certain people might say, and certain people might be right.

He looks…he looks loved. He looks _in_ love. He doesn’t hide it well. Never has done.

Gerry catches his eye, knocks a quick rhythm against his shoulder with his knuckles as he passes by. It’s a miracle that Tim is still too busy celebrating to have noticed anything at all.

Except that apparently, he isn’t—and Jon should really know better than to underestimate Tim’s observational skills by now—because as soon as he’s back with his feet on the ground he’s muscling Martin into position until he can tuck Martin’s head under his chin despite being about four inches shorter. He uses the position to raise an unnoticed eyebrow in Jon’s direction, and despite the lack of words to accompany it, it would be impossible not to understand what he’s saying.

Jon shakes his head, no emotion in particular hidden behind the action. The interruption was most decidedly unwanted, but it’s not the end of the world. Martin’s contract extension is much more important than whether or not Jon wishes they would all just _leave_ for like, two minutes—just two minutes to themselves, so Jon can say he knows what it’s like to kiss Martin Blackwood—and _then_ they can come back and celebrate. There will be time later, Jon knows. He’s not sure of many things, in his life or anyone else’s, but if there’s one thing he’s learned it’s that Martin holds on rather tightly to the things he wants. And if he wants Jon half as much as Jon wants him, well.

There will be time later.

*

As luck would have it, “there will be time later,” turns into extra practices to make the playoff push after slipping behind in the standings, turns into charged looks and prolonged touches in passing, turns into celebrating locking down a spot in the wild card game, turns into no time at all. And then it’s never the _right_ time, because everything feels too busy and too cluttered, and…and, and, and.

And it has to be perfect. It has to mean something because _Martin_ means something—Martin means _everything_. He can’t just try to jam it in with the rest of everything that’s going on around them. It’s not enough.

“You know nobody cares, right?” Tim asks, after witnessing one too many said charged looks and prolonged touches in passing. “Like, we’re all very much rooting for you both here. I thought you were all but dating already anyway, what happened?”

Jon shrugs. “It’s not the right time.”

Tim looks rather unimpressed. “I’m sorry? It’s been what, two weeks, you haven’t found _any_ time between then and now?”

“I—look, it’s not like we haven’t _talked_ about it.”

And they had. At length. It fills Jon with warmth, remembering.

_“Martin. Martin, if Tim hadn’t—I would’ve—"_

_“No, I know. You were…surprisingly very eager.”_

_“Why surprising?”_

_“Dunno. It’s me.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Yes?”_

_“Yes. Wouldn’t be so eager if it was anyone else.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Martin, I’m in this, if…if you are.”_

_“I am. You know I am, I told you first.”_

_“Good.”_

_“Good?”_

_“Yes, good. Wasn’t looking forward to finding out what happened if you said no.”_

_“Why’s that?”_

_“Because it’s you.”_

A hand is being waved in front of his face. “Hello? Jon? I know you’re starting in a few hours, but you can’t zone out on me yet, it’s not time for that.”

“Hm?” Jon shakes his head to dispel the fuzziness. “Right, sorry. Anyway, it’s like I said, it’s not like we haven’t talked about it. We just haven’t really…done anything.”

Tim squints like he’s trying to understand. “Right, but you just _don’t_ , usually? Do anything, that is. Like, in general. So I don’t see what that has to do with this.” He pauses. “Wait, was he a dick about that? Because I can—”

“No, he wasn’t—no, it’s fine, Tim, we’re fine. We talked about it, he doesn’t care. I just mean—we like each other. That’s it so far.”

“That’s it? You, what, you like each other but you’re not dating? Even you have to see how stupid that sounds, Jon.”

“Hadn’t escaped my notice, thanks,” Jon says rather dryly. “I don’t know what it is, it’s just…we’re busy, I guess. There’s not a lot of time right now, and it feels like doing something in the middle of it all would, I don’t know, make it feel less important or something.” And Jon _needs_ it to be important, so desperately, that when he so much as thinks about trying to shove it all so haphazardly together, in the middle of playoffs and roster finalizations and extra practices, he feels dread coiling up deep in the pit of his stomach. It deserves more than that. They deserve more than that— _Martin_ deserves more than that. “So we’re just…waiting.”

“For what?”

Another shrug. “The right—”

“The right time, yes,” Tim interrupts, “I got that part. So how does it work, then? In the meantime?”

Before Jon can formulate an answer, someone comes up behind him, hand coming to rest gently over his elbow. He knows it’s Martin without having to turn around, the presence comforting and soft. With hardly any input from his brain, he leans into the touch. Tim doesn’t bother to hide the grin spreading across his lips.

“You’re still coming to mine before the game, right?” Martin asks, voice like a blanket settling firmly over Jon’s shoulders

Jon looks up. Nearly falls over at the fondness writ across Martin’s features, the gentle smile that is only for him. “Yes. We’ll come in together.”

And that gentle smile only grows softer, lighting up his eyes in a way that echoes in Jon’s chest. There is a moment, just a hitch, where Martin turns to leave before something catches him. Jon means to ask after it, to wonder if there was something he missed, but then Martin is ducking in close and a kiss is being pressed, featherlight, against the greying hair at his temple. He blinks and Martin is halfway to the showers.

“Well, it’s a whole lot of that, I suppose,” Jon says, finally answering Tim’s question.

“I see.” Tim looks far more amused than he has any right to me. “Not a date though, right?”

“Not as such, no.” It couldn’t be. A slapdash lunch date just a few hours before Jon has to start in a wildcard game doesn’t quite say _I love you and this is important to me and what we’re doing isn’t messy like everything else in our lives right now_ , not like he wants it to.

“Right.”

The rest of the day is a blur. Just like that, it’s time for the first pitch. Jon would be lying if he said he wasn’t terrified. But that’s not anyone’s business but his. He’s got a job to do.

And he does it well. It’s a little rocky, to begin with, but they manage to answer every earned run with a run of their own, and by the time Jon has to leave at the end of the sixth they even manage to hang on to a nice three-run lead. It’s no surprise that Martin is already warming up at the start of the seventh.

Well, it’s no surprise to Jon. Martin is a little harder to convince.

That’s actually something Jon had anticipated. It’s why instead of hanging out in the dugout after he’s been pulled, he takes the long way around to the bullpen. If he’d thought the in-game footage of him smiling at Martin’s performances earlier in the season were embarrassing, he could only imagine what this was going to look like.

It’s amazing how little he cares, now.

“Wh—Jon? What are you doing here?” And despite the genuine confusion in his voice, Martin looks like he can’t help the soft look that takes over his face.

Jon’s sure he must look the same, despite his concern. “Thought maybe you’d need a little…encouragement,” he says. “You looked a bit stiff.”

Martin tries to laugh; it gets a little strangled. “No, I’m—it’s fine.”

“Martin. What is it?”

Martin’s shoulders drop. His breath comes out on a long sigh. “It’s just—are they sure they want me out there? I mean, I know I’ve gotten better, and there was the whole extension and everything, but…I mean, what if I choke? You know how I freeze up and get in my head when I mess up, what if I just…what if I blow it, Jon? I don’t know if I can do this.”

Jon doesn’t know what to do with Martin staring at him like that, all frantic and broken. He hasn’t seen that look on his face in a long time, not since they started working together on improving his game. It hurts so acutely, a pinpoint pressure right over top of his breastbone. He lays a hand over Martin’s shoulder, fingers curling around the back of his neck and rubbing circles into the skin just behind his ear. “Look, Martin,” he starts. “I know you think you weren’t very good, before, but you _were_. Everything was there, you had the talent, you just didn’t let yourself see it. You know, now. I don’t have time to go into the tape room and show you everything, but the proof is there. You’re amazing, Martin, and I know there’s no way you’re going to stand here and try to convince yourself that you aren’t. There’s no one else I want coming in behind me right now.”

Martin is quiet, for a moment. In the seconds before he speaks, Jon’s sure he’s mucked it up somehow. Then he’s laughing, saying, “you know, I used to think you probably wouldn’t be very good at the whole comfort thing. Nice enough, sure, you’ve never been _mean_ , but I never pictured you being…like this.”

“I didn’t used to be, before.”

“Really? What changed?”

“You did.”

If they were anywhere else, Jon would’ve kissed him. As it is, he almost does anyway. The only thing stopping him is the constant roar of the crowd in his ears and the signal that the second half of the inning is about to begin. At the commotion of people moving on and off the field to switch places, some of the earlier tension returns to Martin’s shoulders. It’s not as bad as before. When Jon looks at him, really looks, he can see the determination he’d grown so used to seeing over the past few months settling over Martin’s features.

“You’re going to be fine, love.” The endearment falls from his lips, unbidden. It’s not something he’s said before, had rather tried to keep it to himself, actually, but. It feels _right_ to say now, somehow, despite it being nowhere near the right time for such declarations in general.

Martin doesn’t seem opposed, despite its spontaneity. A frustrated groan builds in the back of his throat. “Is it bad that I _really_ want to kiss you right now?”

“Get us out of this, and maybe I’ll let you.”

“That’s horrible.”

“No, _that’s_ incentive. Now get out there, they’re not going to wait forever.”

Back in the dugout Jon will quietly admit, to himself, that he’s a little nervous. Not because he thinks Martin is going to do poorly, or because he has anything less than the utmost faith in the rest of his team, but because it’s just kind of. Well.

If the man you love is going in with three innings left in the most important game you’ve had to play so far this season, and _he’s_ nervous, then… There’s a bit of osmosis there, you know?

The nervousness turns out not to be necessary rather quickly. Jon feels like he’s barely allowed time to blink before the inning is over, Martin dropping down beside him on the bench after making quick work of striking out the side.

“I hadn’t intended for that to be _quite_ so effective of an incentive,” he jokes.

Martin’s grabbing a helmet as he responds, his position in the lineup fast approaching as the opposition’s relief seems to implode, loading the bases with only one out in the frame. “You knew _exactly_ what you were doing, Jon,” he laughs. “I’ve been waiting to kiss you since my extension, I’m not about to let one wild card game get in the way of that.”

His at bat goes like this:

It’s one of those swings that you can just tell is going to carry. Even so, it’s still a shock when it’s carried deep into left field, no one around to get a glove on it.

Jon hardly believes what’s happening until Tim is shouting in his ear, a long string of nonsensical curses accompanied by some very frenzied throwing of limbs. If Jon were anyone else, he might be barely restraining himself from throwing himself over the guardrails of the dugout and screaming himself hoarse. Instead, he stays seated and lets Tim shake him around by the shoulders as a grin threatens to split his face in half.

Their lead grows by three, then, as Martin slides into third. The ball is barely being tossed into the infield by the time he gets to his feet, leaning over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Jon can tell he’s trying not to look too overly pleased with himself as he turns to squint at the scoreboard behind him. He doesn’t quite succeed. Jon almost says to hell with it and kisses him the minute he crosses back into the dugout.

Almost.

In the eighth, they have a couple relievers tossing lazy pitches back and forth in the bullpen, but none of them have the laser-sharp focus of someone who is about to take over, and Jon knows that unless Martin completely devolves and gives up six in one inning, he’s not going anywhere. He doesn’t give up any.

With one out left in the ninth, Martin is still right where he should be, and the bullpen is completely empty. Jon doesn’t think he’s ever heard the dugout be quite this silent. A couple pitches later, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard it get quite this loud.

He’s vaulting over the guardrails before he can ask where his legs are taking him, sprinting through the infield without a thought. A haphazard pile begins to form over the mound as Martin throws his glove into the air, shouting something that Jon can’t hear over the rushing in his ears. Dirt is being rubbed into jerseys, bottles of water and Gatorade being unceremoniously splashed over whoever is unfortunate enough to be in the way. In the middle of it all, Jon’s arms find their way around Martin’s waist. Martin pulls him tight in return, crushing him close enough that Jon doesn’t have to try very hard to find the excuse to press his face into the space where Martin’s neck meets his shoulder. And there, hidden beneath a pile of twenty-five grown, overexcited athletes, Jon shifts to give the barest press of his lips right up against Martin’s collarbone.

*

The only thing louder than a ballpark full of thousands of people screaming after a playoffs clinching wildcard win is a clubhouse full of less than one hundred people screaming after a playoffs clinching wildcard win. It doesn’t make sense but it’s _true_. Physics, or something, don’t look it up.

It’s probably also the only thing _messier_ than a ballpark full of thousands of people, if Jon is being honest. Usually, he’s not the biggest fan of messes, prefers to keep things neat and orderly and keep himself clean and put-together as well. But come on, they just won the _wildcard_. This is the first major league playoffs Jon has been to _ever_ , is it his fault if he goes a little overboard with the champagne showers?

He’s soaking wet before long, jersey sticking to his skin in awkward places, the fizz of champagne a not altogether unpleasant feeling as it sneaks its way underneath the fabric. You’d think they’d get tired eventually—how many times can you _really_ say “fuckin’ right, boys” and spray each other with alcohol before it gets repetitive, anyway—but it just keeps _going_.

Tim barrels into him at one point, a loud, teasing kiss smacked right up against his temple. “Fucking _brilliant_ , Jon!” he yells. “Absolutely brilliant, where’s Martin?” Jon has no earthly clue, except he knows that he _needs_ to find him as well, needs to make good on his promise before he explodes. He doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or the thrill of winning or what, but he suddenly finds that he’s tired of waiting.

Before Jon can come up with an answer, though, Tim is spinning in the opposite direction, seemingly catching a glimpse of Martin in the crowded clubhouse. He shouts after him and runs off without another word.

Gerry finds Jon soon after, interrupting his plan to trail off in the same direction. He looks like he’s handling the drink much better than the rest of them, eyes still sparkling with that familiar excitement that Jon knows he must be reflecting back at him, but more subdued in his movements. Gerry always has been the one to keep them all together, when they were like this; it’s something Jon’s always appreciated.

“Really good job out there today, Jon,” Gerry says. “Always told you that you were gonna lead us to a championship someday.”

Jon still finds it in him to be scandalized, despite it all. “Don’t _jinx_ it, Gerry, we’ve hardly even made it to the first round already!”

Gerry rolls his eyes, claps a hand over Jon’s shoulder. “Not a jinx if I’m right. You’ll prove it, I know you will.”

It’s nice, the faith that Gerry has in him. Jon’s had one of the best seasons of his career, just sent his team to the first round of the playoffs for the first time in years, he knows how good he is. No one can take that away from him—not the press, not middle-aged men with a twitter account and nothing better to do, not Elias fucking Bouchard himself. He has the proof now. Even so, it’s nice to have that external affirmation, and if there’s anything that Gerry’s ever been better at than being a closer it’s making sure that people know their worth.

“Thanks, Gerry.”

“Tell Martin I said the same about him, yeah?” he asks, eyes knowing. Jon let’s the alcohol be the explanation for the blush that rises to his cheeks when he answers in the affirmative. “Might want to hurry.” Gerry gestures to where Tim has just finished attempting to swing Martin around in an enthusiastic hug. “Before someone else gets to him. I’m sure you two have a lot to say to each other.”

And then, finally, there they are. Away from the thick of it, tucked together next to the showers. Martin leans heavily against one of the tarp-covered walls, only wincing slightly when the sweaty plastic material plasters itself against his back.

“So,” Martin says. “I got us out of it.”

A smile blooms over Jon’s face instantly, the kind he doesn’t usually let himself show because he’s always been told that he’s all teeth. When Martin looks at him like that, it’s hard to care. “You really did, didn’t you.”

 _Is it bad that I_ really _want to kiss you right now?_

_Get us out of this, and maybe I’ll let you._

The words rattle around in his brain like a marble in a Ramune bottle, not helped at all by the drink in his system, clouding his thoughts together to the point where it’s all he _can_ think about, properly.

And Jon is more than a little tipsy, and he can hardly see for the champagne sticking his lashes together, and it is _still_ not the right time, but.

But.

But Martin’s looking at him like his being here is better than any wild card win could ever be, even though his clothes are soaked through with alcohol and his hat is on sideways and he managed to lose a shoe about ten minutes into the celebration, and Jon thinks he could die with how profoundly it all aches. Why does he _care_? Why does it matter if the time is right, or if they’re too busy, or if everything isn’t perfect? There’s not a single moment where Jon feels anything short of magnificent when Martin is around anyway, there’s no way this thing between them could ever feel like anything less than the most important thing that’s ever happened to him, so what is he _waiting_ for?

He’s not, he decides. Not anymore.

And it is absolutely abysmal. It’s the worst kiss he’s ever had. Jon doesn’t get the angle right, at first, and their teeth knock together, and the kiss itself ends up landing just beneath Martin’s chin.

And it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Because he absolutely butchers the entire thing, and Martin _laughs_ at him, the bastard, but Martin also lifts a hand to curve around his jaw, to keep him steady, and gently bumps his nose with his own. And the laughter echoes in the space between them, and Jon feels like he could fit a whole universe of stars in that infinite little bubble. And he can barely make out the curve of Martin’s lower lip as it rests ever-so-gentle against his own, the faintest pressure outlining the barest suggestion of a kiss. And his lungs are burning, and he doesn’t quite know how long he’s been holding his breath, when the laughter stopped and the air stilled and everything else went blank.

And before Jon has time to process, he’s met with the oddly satisfying taste of stale champagne against his lips. It tastes better than any win he’s ever recorded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that one was for the sum total of three people probably who happen to consume tma and are also dbacks stans. if u have no idea what I'm talking about it's okay <3 also please never distract your pitchers just before they're about to go in the game. I had to do it for plot reasons, but that's not good regular practice

**Author's Note:**

> so do they win the championship? I sure hope so. at the very least, they’ve won each other, and that’s the ending I was writing towards anyway.
> 
> thanks so much to everyone who decided to give this au a shot and to everyone who told me how much they loved it specifically _because_ the concept itself was so off-the-wall crazy. I can't tell u enough how much your comments and genuine enthusiasm meant to me, especially while I was still writing and u all kept stressing how excited u were for future uploads. I never expected this story to get as big as it did, length wise, and I never expected quite so many people to interact--thanks so much for proving me wrong.
> 
> one last time, thank u to robin for all the hand-holding and joint brainstorming, even though u had no idea what I was talking about in regards to either baseball _or_ tma itself. thank u as well to my good friend kendall, who has always been the sweetest in terms of encouragement and never fails to make me feel like I've created the newest piece of great american literature.
> 
> I've got a few more stories I've been bouncing around, and if you'd like to keep up with that or u just wanna keep up with me please hmu on either twitter or tumblr at @acetheticallyy and @judesstfrancis, respectively.
> 
>  **this fic has art now!!** big thanks to the truly lovely @hihereami (both here and on twitter) for bringing this fic to life with her art I cannot stress enough how amazing it is I haven't been able to stop looking at it: https://twitter.com/hihereami/status/1321662835676631040?s=19


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